A Path Stained Red
by Lady Alstreim
Summary: Reincarnation wasn't something I expected, but I certainly wasn't complaining. Great mothers, psychic powers, a great older sister, really, on balance this new life was great. The fact that I also get to be a living legend of the Pokemon world was really just gravy. Semi-SI genderbent Red
1. Childhood 1

Awareness came to me slowly over the years. I remember reading about people reincarnating and remembering the time they spent in their mother's womb, their own birth, every excruciating little detail of the life of a baby that I assume most everyone else doesn't remember. I didn't remember all of that, thank fuck. No, my first memory was of cuddling with my new mother as she read me a bedtime story. Things built up from there, with new memories being forged and big chunks of old memories from my past life slotting in and forming the person I used to be around the core of the new person I was growing up to be. My past life hadn't been a particularly long life, nor one particularly well acquainted with happiness and other positive things, but I think if nothing else it helped me better appreciate the new life I'd been born into.

On balance, the new life was an upgrade really, better genes if my new mother was anything to go by, super model looks, smart as hell, and one of the sweetest people I'd ever known. Not to mention that I got the feel that she was the kind to be very picky about who she took to bed, so they had to be at least similarly impressive. We had money from from her own career before having me, which given the standard of living we had must have been something suitably impressive. All of this before even taking into account the Pokemon, or my new genetic femaleness. Really, I'd have jumped into some shitty lives for a chance at either of those, but getting both and great circumstances at the same time? Sign me the fuck up.

I was lucky as all hell and I was more than willing to take this new life to be a "Sorry about the past one" apology from whatever deity was in charge up there. I mean, my new mother's starter had been a Ralts, one of my favorites of all time, and she'd asked her now Gardevoir to provide an egg for me to be able to grow up with a companion to play with. Luna hatched a month before I was born, and New Mother and Gardevoir named her after the patron legendary pokemon of the Alola region. Huh. There's a thought. I knew how to get a Lunala. And a few others. Hm, ideas...

It didn't take long for me to realize that I had really, really, won the genetics lottery. Forget the looks, not the smarts though, forget the height, whatever. No, it was all about that one time when my favorite mug in this new world of mine fell off the table and I just _reached_ and suddenly it was being held just above the floor by a corona of blue light. It took a second to fully sink in, to feel the mug with my mind, it was like an entirely new sense had revealed itself, a third eye through which I saw the world in an entirely new manner.

I could feel Luna sleeping on the couch to my left, could feel Mother outside watering her garden greenhouse with Gardevoir by her side. Could feel as Gardevoir turned to look at me through the walls of the house, feel her attention and just how very startled she was. I suppose it's not often you get to feel a human use psychic abilities. Then I slipped off my chair and banged my head against the table on the way down. Got six stitches right over the end of my right eyebrow and it's probably the reason my mother ended up going silver before she was even thirty. Well that and the constant worrying over my nascent psychic abilities and her fears that I would be taken from her and exploited. Which to be fair was probably a very legitimate worry, what with the ridiculous glut of criminal organizations that infested the Pokemon world, all of varying levels of evilness.

Oh, maybe my father was the leader of one of those organizations and that was why she was so worried people would find out about my abilities, and then rumor would spread and reach Evil Father, ensuing a legal battle for custody the likes only seen in the most dramatic of movies or tv series. Damn. I really had to double down on keeping my psychic abilities secret. As much as I would like a father, I didn't want mother worrying so much and having to fight to keep me. Besides, I can't imagine Evil Father would be that good a father. They all seemed pretty bad at the responsible adult thing, what with their doomsday plans and stuff that got easily foiled by a champion to be preteen or tween who happens to be passing by.

But I digress. After the awakening of my psychic abilities playing with Luna became an entirely new level of fun, believe me, nothing beats playing catch with telekinesis and multiple objects at the same time. For all that I had the life experiences of a twentysomething year old, there was a simple joy to using psychic powers to just have fun. Well that and being a child again seemed to mess with my mind a little. Still, I kept enough of my adult mind to make everything into training. Or try to anyway. For all that playing catch was fun, I made sure to keep increasing the force and speed of the balls over time. I figured if ever there was a training method that simulated EV training in the games for special attack, it was this. Given that Luna's telekinesis (and my own) kept getting stronger and stronger, I figure I was probably right.

Hopefully one day we'd get to supersonic bullet levels of telekinesis and overcome the weakness to dark types through the application of sufficient firepower. Not that there was any such thing of course, any self respecting aspirant to telekinetic bullets knows there's never enough firepower, just that there is such a thing as 'one at sufficient velocity'. If we couldn't achieve sufficient velocity, then by Inari Okami, about the only deity I ever cared about or for, we would drown them in bullet hell. I suppose the paranoia made it through the reincarnation. But I mean, is it really paranoia if they're probably to out get you on general principle of having psychic abilities?

So we sat in our porch, Luna and I, watching snow fall, gathering it and compressing it into balls of ice which we juggled and played tug of war with. It was quite peaceful really. Perhaps it had something to do with childhood, but there were many more moments where there was no worry, no anxiety, no sadness or depression, just tranquility, and just happy contentedness. Time had little meaning in those moments and it felt like days passed just watching the snow and playing with telekinesis. In reality it couldn't have been more than a few hours from beginning to the time mother found us cuddled up in a pile of blankets and herded us back inside for lunch. Well, not more than a few hours the first time it happened anyway.

We sat at the dinner table, eating a rather delicious creamy pasta dish, when a thought occurred to me. I could be a trainer. I could go out into the world and conquer. I know, it's hard to believe the thought hadn't ever crossed my mind before, but ever since awakening my psychic powers I'd been entirely focused on training them, honing them into a deadly weapon, for the purpose of gaining personal power, so that I could never be powerless no matter what. A goal inherited from my past self, I suspected, but one I'd pursued with the whole of my new being. Not training Luna had never been an option. She was as close to me as it was possible without being an extension of myself, and really to a degree we were extensions of each other through our psychic bond. We were inseparable, where I went she went, and where she went I went. Of course she'd accompany me through my journey to unlimited power. Power for the sake of power, and I was more than fine with that, but being able to put that power to use?

The mere thought made me shudder in anticipation.

There was an outside chance I may have some sort of megalomania. One more point for the Evil Father theory. That had to come from somewhere and New Mother was way too sweet to be the bloodthirsty conqueror type who wanted to see her enemies driven before her and to hear the lamentations of their women, or men, you know, whatever, not picky as long as lamentations are had. So in service of that I took a pause in between bites of deliciousness and asked my mother a very important question.

"Hey mom?"

"Yeah pumpkin?"

"How old am I?"

The look she gave me was incredulous and I wasn't sure why. I mean it's not like there was much use to age beyond knowing whether you could buy booze or not, how appropriate sexual behaviors were, a few others odds and ends, and I was most definitely not old enough for that yet. Really, not even close to even being able to consider the possibility of it for years to come.

"Honey, are you okay? You should know this."

"I suppose, but it's a number! There's so many more interesting things than numbers! Well, numbers that small anyway."

She stared at me, opened her mouth then closed it without saying anything, shook her head, sighed, and finally answered.

"You're five, love."

"Ah."

Well damn. I still had five more years to go before I could go out and smash faces in.

"What's wrong?"

"Wish I were ten."

Which wasn't entirely true. My past life had given me perspective on the issue of wishing you were older than your actual age. That is to say that as you got older the more you wished you were younger, an inverse from wishing your were older when you were younger. I was perfectly content to continue this idyllic existence of peace and quiet spent training phenomenal cosmic powers to new heights and was in no rush to leave it behind, but I would love to eventually experience the act of going out and conquering.

Mother was silent at that, something I hadn't expected. I looked up at her to see hurt on her beautiful face, mingled with fear and sadness. Luna and Gardevoir had noticed too and they were looking at us. Not surprising, Ralts were the Feeling Pokemon and I couldn't imagine they lost the ability as they evolved. Empathy was an aspect of my powers I hadn't explored much, lacking the instinctual talent for it my Luna did, and preferring to focus on the direct application of force over it, I was incapable of passively picking up on emotions like she could, but I could feel them if I focused on a person hard enough.

I loved my mother. It was hard to put into words how much, just like with Luna and Gardevoir, but I did. I'd cared for my mother in my past life, but we'd always been distant, both as a result of our dispositions and from a very tumultuous relationship. I'd cared, but we'd been so very distant. It hurt to remember. In this new life, mother made herself so very easy to love and adore and it hurt even worse to see her in pain, especially knowing that I'd caused it, somehow. So I opened that sense, that third eye, to its fullest extent and focused it on her.

It was a flood of information, so many tiny futures extending a few seconds ahead, the feel of her mind, of her soul, indistinct whispers of thought kept behind mental shields built up over years of contact with a psychic pokemon. So much, too much even. Within a second I had a headache, and within two it was monumental, but I persevered. By second three I had a truly epic migraine and was drawing on my psychic power hard enough that my eyes were probably glowing, but I'd managed to narrow in on her emotions and clamped down on the sense, closing the third eye most of the way until it was looking only at what she was feeling and nothing else.

I felt her fear that if I left to go on a pokemon journey I would be an easy target for anyone trying to nab themselves a powerful psychic. Sadness that I would be away from her, that I wanted to go away. And pain, hurt, so very strong and poignant at the thought that her five year old daughter wanted to leave so very much that she wished she were five years older, that her daughter was so very dissatisfied with her failure of a mother that she couldn't wait to leave.

I couldn't breathe. How? How had I not noticed this?

I cast my mind back to my admittedly limited memories, trying to see if I could spot any indications as to my mother's insecurities and worries. To see if there was anything I could have done to help, to make it better, to prevent her from feeling this horrible pain, and found nothing. Nothing but my perfect, loving, and caring mother who'd done so very well in raising me so far. I was relieved. I wasn't so terrible a daughter for not having seen the signs since there had been no signs to see. Well, that or I was oblivious. I hoped it was the former.

So I hugged her as hard as my five year old body could manage. Wasn't much, but if ever there was a situation where 'it's the thought that counts' it was this. I hoped. I did my best to hug her harder just in case, not that it did much. Her emotion shifted, affection, love, the hurt diminishing a little. I pulled back and used the space to climb on top of her so I wasn't just hugging her waist. Perks of being tiny. Then I dope slapped her. The look she gave me was glorious.

"Silly mom. You're not a failure, you are the best ever. Probably. I mean, I have a kinda limited sample size, but so far I'm pretty satisfied with the job you've done in raising me. More than satisfied even. So don't think like that, rest assured that you're awesome and I love you."

Judging by the shift in her emotions to incredulity and then to sheer utter love, I'd succeeded in making her feel better. The hug I got in return that could only be classified as fierce and the happy crying session that followed were just confirmation.


	2. Childhood 2

The great thing about psychic powers, outside of being psychic powers, was that people didn't question it when you knew things you shouldn't. Well, they didn't question it too hard. This made getting away with my reincarnated knowledge easy, and when mother started making noise about me going to school soon instead of letting me continue doing my thing with Luna in our quest for unbelievable cosmic power it was a matter of getting in contact with the administration of the school and testing out.

Which I did. Honestly the hardest part was managing to get out of the house and to the school because I was pretty sure mother wouldn't approve of my plan. I couldn't wait to learn how to teleport. So I waited until Gardevoir was taking a nap and mother was cooking lunch. We lived on the outskirts of Snowpoint City, something that had taken me an embarrassingly long time to bother asking about, and the the school was a half hour walk away.

For being such a weird mishmash of futuristic and dated, I'd expected something more… interesting, design-wise, from the world of Pokemon when it came to the the school, but it was so generic that for all I knew it had come out of some random city in my old life. So I went in and asked the first person I saw where the administrative offices were, and walked through hallways that reminded me of my old highschool, what with all the lockers on the walls and the boring neutral color scheme. I was so skipping out on this bullshit.

The tests were nothing special, I mean, how could they be? They were elementary school level tests. The hardest part was history which I passed only by virtue of having played most of the games up to the Alola region, though I was sure I'd only barely scraped together a passing grade. When I got to the essay section in the language portion of the exams I couldn't help the grin on my face when I cut loose with a critique of rote learning vs. meaningful learning and the benefits provided by the latter over the former. So I'd overheard some lectures on my way to the tests and been unimpressed, sue me.

Five hours later and I was feeling a bit guilty about not having left a more informative note, but in my defense "Going out, be back later, I'll be okay" had seemed like a perfectly acceptable note, I'd simply forgotten to think about how long testing out of school would take. I should probably think things through a bit more in the future. Nothing to do about it now except get colossally grounded. Man, that was going to be annoying. I walked back home, Luna beside me frolicking in the snow, and pondered how to spin it. I mean, parents were supposed to be excited about their children's academic achievements right? Maybe I could dazzle her with my near perfect testing scores (damn you history!) and distract her enough to get away with it. Yeah, that'd probably work.

Or not. I was pretty sure the police motorcycle parked by the front yard meant mother was past freaking out. Damn. Maybe I could wait a little longer and she'd calm down? The door opening with enough force to have it bang against the wall and then being enveloped in a huge hug by mother while Gardevoir did the same for Luna put paid to that idea.

"Oh, thank Arceus, you're alright. Where were you? I was so worried!" Mother's guilting game was on point. She did it masterfully without even trying. She was crying, and I could feel the all consuming fear in her at the thought that something might have happened to me. I was a terrible human being for driving her to this state. She grabbed me by the shoulders and held me in front of her so she could get a better look at me, and once she was assured I was more or less alright, some of the fear turned to anger. "Where were you?"

There's something to be said for the saying that you never stop listening to your parents even when you become an adult, because in that moment I just about forgot about anything other than trying to please her and stop her being angry with me. So I did the only thing I could think of and just put the documents the school had given me in front of her face. She read them and just gave me this Look. It was capitalized and everything. I could feel the emphasis. It was equal parts exasperation, frustration, relief, and a few other emotions I could barely make sense of even by listening in with empathy.

"I'm going to go out on a limb and guess everything is okay and this was all a misunderstanding?" said a tall woman with long dark blue hair in a police uniform. Wow, Officer Jennies came from really good stock because the one behind mother was really beautiful. Maybe she was like the one overachieving Jenny of the family who was perfect at everything and even got all of the best genes in the family or something. I needed to meet more Jennies to make sure.

Oh.

Idea.

"Mom, is this your girlfriend?"

Officer Jenny turned a particularly bright shade of red and mother choked on air. Then also turned red. Psychic senses tingled and a picture began to form in my mind. Well. That was unexpected. I'd need to see about making this a thing then. Mother deserved to be happy and Perfect Officer Jenny seemed like a good way to accomplish that. How to do it? I suppose I could get lost again, but there was no guarantee that they'd send the same officer to answer the call, and it seemed to me that worrying over your daughter's well being wasn't conducive to starting a relationship.

I suppose I could become a problem child and use my phenomenal cosmic power to make sure that it was always Perfect Officer Jenny who picked me up for whatever misconduct I participated in, but I didn't want to put mother through the stress. Guess I'd have to make it a meet cute, somehow. I'd figure it out later. Right now it was time to push for advantage or the moment to distract mother would be lost.

"She's pretty mom." I said, before looking up at Officer Jenny, "You keep mom safe and treat her well, okay?"

Mother's grip on my shoulders had slackened by the surprise, and I took advantage to step forward, hug her, slip away from her grip, hug Officer Jenny's waist, pick up Luna, and go inside. Mission accomplished, I'd say. Now lunch, well, lunchdinner. Once in the kitchen I did something I'd thought about on the way over and started pulling plates and cutlery out of their cupboards and serving something that looked like cheesy mashed potatoes with corn, popcorn chicken, and gravy. Now I felt like an even bigger heel. She'd made one of my favorite meals in both lives.

On the one hand she got a girlfriend, on the other I worried her terribly, I wonder if it evened out?

I was halfway finished with my plate when mother came into the kitchen and stood to my right. I swear could feel her Stare. Maybe she had a slight psychic talent after all. I continued eating. She continued to Stare. The tableau held for a full two minutes before she sighed and broke the silence.

"You're still grounded. No dessert for two weeks, and I still expect you to keep learning things however it is you learned six years of school in five years of life. And no, you can't go on a journey before you're ten just because you've already completed the educational requirements."

"That's fair." As eager as I was to go on my pokemon journey I had become attached to mother and was in no rush to separate from her or Gardevoir, so her limitations weren't particularly cumbersome. Still, I wasn't looking forward to two weeks without mother's excellent dessert making skills. The woman may be a bit limited on what she could do well reliably to a few dishes, but it was like what she lacked in skill on making regular meals she more than made up for in talent and creativity for desserts.

Another sigh, a huge hug, and she went outside to her greenhouse. I suppose being a mother to a powerful psychic had to be trying at times, had to make sure to incorporate relaxation time in there somewhere, and I knew she loved tending to her garden.

Wait.

Wouldn't this past encounter between mother and Officer Jenny count as a meet cute all on its own? Yes. Yes it would, wouldn't it? Now I just had to make sure that a relationship progressed from it. How did it go in the movies? Damn you past me for having zero interest in the genre and not watching a single movie of the kind for years and years before dying. Now that I thought about it, how the fuck did I even die?


	3. Childhood 3

I wasn't sure at what point mother and Ashely, Officer Jenny's first name as I'd learned, actually became a thing, I mean, I'd completely forgotten to play cupid for them. I was pretty sure mother was keeping it quiet because she didn't want to give me the satisfaction though. I just knew that one morning a month and a half after the whole missing thing I woke up and walked into the kitchen to find Ashely, then known to me only as Perfect Officer Jenny, wearing a large button down shirt, a pair of handcuffs dangling off her left wrist, and I assumed nothing more, making coffee while singing to herself and dancing.

I did my now usual routine and served myself some cereal through judicious abuse of telekinesis, taking extra care to make it as quiet as possible. Wouldn't do to ruin the good officer's groove. I ate my cereal, some delicious thing with tons of sugar and almonds, eventually she turned, saw me, and flinched hard enough that my intervention was the only reason she didn't end up with hot coffee all over herself. I couldn't help the grin, especially when she turned bright red.

"Oh, um… hi." Adorable.

"Hello Officer, you might want to add cinnamon to that, she loves it that way, and one more sugar packet."

"Thank you?"

"You're welcome."

I could practically feel her embarrassment as she added the recommended condiments and scurried out of the kitchen trying to balance the coffee cups while hiding the handcuffs. Truly adorable. Adorkable? Thoughts for later. I finished my bowl and washed it. I wanted to learn to fly, failing that, at least learn to float. Seriously, couldn't believe no one had ever thought to do it. Then again maybe they had and no one knew because there weren't that many of us psychics powerful enough to manage and the internet was barely a thing here. Shame about the internet really, I fucking missed Reddit.

I couldn't wait for Youtube and Google. Maybe I should learn coding and make them myself? I'd be rich as hell. Need to make a note of it. Did I even need to learn coding? For all that I practiced with my abilities extensively I tended to neglect the more esoteric branches, what could be crudely termed as "mindfuckery", not due to a lack of talent or interest mind you, but because telekinetic supersonic bullets were very distracting. Perhaps I could actually learn things by going through people's heads and, uh, appropriating the knowledge. I'd have to look into it.

I settled myself on the back porch, kneeling in seiza before opening my senses just a tad, feeling the currents of psychic energy produced by all living beings. I felt Luna in our room, still sleeping, mother and Ashely in mother's bedroom, snuggled together and... what was that feeling? I couldn't see it clearly without opening that extra sense more. It tasted a little like excitement. An effort of will and the world around me came into sharper focus. Luna was dreaming of being a Gardevoir and single handedly annihilating teams and teams of pokemon. I felt my heart warm at that. My big sister had such beautiful dreams. Had to make sure they became reality, nothing but the best for her.

I turned my focus to mother and Ashely, trying to decipher that odd feeling. It was excitement, affection, intimacy, a smidge of embarrassment and what were they doing? Why was Ashley handcuffing mother, and why was Ashley sliding down to- Oh. I was not blushing. My face was not burning up. Nope. Wait, was that Gardevoir watching…? Nope, no way, moving on.

I focused power around myself, shrouding my body in it, and pulled. It was harder than I imagined it'd be. Like trying to lift literally anything with my actual arms. Guess I needed to exercise my telekinesis on heavier things. Did I just call myself fat? Ah well, no other way about it. I set an alarm on my poketch for lunch, in case time got away from me, or mother, since she seemed preoccupied, and floated there, swaying up and down. Psychic pushups.

My mind wandered, swimming against invisible currents, futures branching out like cracks on a piece of glass, infinity laid bare. It was proving to be a problem. The future seemed to want to be seen, pushing against my mind if I opened the sense just a little, each time more insistent than the last, clearer, further out, always there. It was an enormous effort all on it's own to block the visions, the knowledge, and even then they leaked through as feelings and intuition and knowledge I couldn't have known even through my past life.

What a problem to have, being too good at seeing the future. Who would have thought?

The alarm sounded and the future escaped my hold for a second, a spike of agony driving itself through my brain. The world scorched to cinders by unquenchable fire or drowned in an unending tide, the world erased from existence, Unova turned into a lifeless wasteland, the world wiped clean of all life, the world infested by extradimensional creatures. So much was coming, so very much, and I couldn't know that the people who solved it all on another reality could or would do so in this one.

Sometimes, phenomenal cosmic power wasn't a fun thing to have. Haha, who the fuck am I kidding, phenomenal cosmic power is always a fun and great thing to have, even when it comes with pain and visions of horrible apocalyptic futures.

I was so getting myself a legendary team to back Luna up for when shit started hitting the fan and the crazies came out of the woodwork to purposefully or ignorantly cause an extinction level event. There better be an Ash in this world, or the game protagonists, because I definitely did not feel like shouldering so much responsibility. Saving the world felt like the kind of thing that would cut into gaming or psychic practice time, and I really couldn't have that.

The world shrank back down to the present, and there was mother, holding us to her, worried again. I was such a terrible daughter, even if unintentionally. My arms ached, my whole body ached really, but I made myself hug her hoping that maybe she would feel better.

"What happened pumpkin? You fell down and just collapsed."

"Saw too much. Lost track of time and the alarm surprised me." I had explained to mother some about what my psychic abilities were like, how the future wanted to be seen. She worried, but she knew I'd sooner cut out my eyes than give up my ability, and that for all that Gardevoir was strong she couldn't stop me from using it. So she hugged me and didn't let go until my stomach growled. I hugged her back, and when the time to eat came I let her mother me until the worry faded and was forgotten for the moment.

The future wanted to be seen and I had to learn to ignore it. There was little else to be done about it. Better enjoy what I could when I could... Wait, did I really just consider ignoring my ability to see the future instead of using it and maliciously and viciously exploiting it for my own fun and profit?! What the fuck me? Big Small Sis would be so disappointed in me if she ever learned of this moment of failure.

Officer Ashely Jenny slowly became a fixture in my life. Mother tried to slide her in all discrete like, playing the "just close friends" angle and likely hoping to mix in the girlfriend bit sometime down the line and hope I didn't realize. Problem for her was I'd caught on from the very start and more often than not had to make a solid effort to keep from witnessing things going on between them that I shouldn't be witnessing at my current age.

She came around for meals, watched television with us, 'babysat' me when mother had to go out and couldn't take me with her, and fuck if I wasn't curious what she was doing when she did that, she even knew about my phenomenal cosmic power after feeling the genuineness and strength of her feelings for mother and myself. It was… difficult. I wasn't exactly a social person, a trait that had been with me for most of my previous life as well, and letting someone new into my life was something I wasn't good at. But I was starting to love her so very much as well.

I did my best anyway and since she seemed to like me I figured I was doing well enough with the social thing. Her being there did have the unintended side effect of me occasionally catching glimpses of the man's button up shirt from that first morning, which Ashely seemed to like wearing in the mornings before getting ready. Could it be my father's? There really was no other reason for it to be in the house, mother hadn't dated at all until Ashley. It was a fairly nice looking shirt too, black, looked like silk. He must have been a good dresser.

This was one of those mornings when Ashely came out to make coffee for herself and mother. When this happened and she woke before me, she'd either set out my customary breakfast cereal or cook an actual breakfast meal for me. It was one of those things that endeared her to both myself and mother.

Today was one of those days, and so I sat and watched her as she worked. She was wearing the shirt. I couldn't help staring. I didn't want to ask mother, she already felt inadequate as a parent and asking would probably only make it worse. So I stared at what could be the only link I had to my father. I could almost picture him, a striking figure in the black shirt and black slacks, my red hair in a shorter style and different shade, face in shadows. He had a set of pokeballs clipped to his belt, an Arcanine stood before him, and then I saw Gardevoir facing off against it, mother looking oh so much younger behind her.

The past, I realized, the headache that came hand in hand with looking through the currents of time was as good as anything could be as confirmation. I wasn't sure how to feel.

"You okay love?" Ashely said, and I realized she was no longer cooking anything and was in fact beside me, hands on my shoulders and a worried look on her face.

"Yes, I'm sorry, I spaced out."

"Want to talk about it?"

I shook my head and thanked her for the scrambled eggs sitting on a plate in front of me. She looked reluctant to leave, but an "I'm okay, don't worry!" eventually convinced to return to mother. So I ate my eggs, and pondered the past. Luna joined me not long after and we shared the eggs and some cereal while she did her best to help me sort out the tangled mess that were my feelings and thoughts. Big Small Sis was awesome like that.


	4. Childhood 4

I stood before mother and Gardevoir and today would be the day we finally managed to land a hit on our second mother in combat. Ashely sat on the house porch with her Growlithe out cuddled up to her for warmth, ready to be entertained by my flailings. Luna and I had started using psychic fuckery to keep warm without having to wear cumbersomely numerous layers of clothing in the constant snows of Snowpoint so we were mostly good. Heat was simply waste energy of all kinds after all, and as a psion I had the unique ability to manipulate energy in ways that most everyone and everything else couldn't. It'd taken some practice, but eventually we'd learned to vibrate the air molecules around us until they began emitting the extra energy as waste heat and acting as a heating system. We'd practiced the opposite successfully too, just in case we were ever someplace too hot for comfort.

As a result I was clad in a crimson skirt, white stockings, a strappy top, and a jacket that was almost an exact replica in coloration style of what the most popular representations of Pokemon Trainer Red used, except with long billowy sleeves like you'd see in miko haori, and a longer cut that had the bottom of the jacket a little past what was my admittedly too short skirt for my age. Mama was wearing like three coats and pants to keep warm. Score for phenomenal cosmic powers.

She thought I was silly and being too dramatic and stuff with my outfit, but I was a damned anime/manga/video game protagonist, and if I was going to have to deal with the bullshit that often came with such I was going to at least wear something like the super cool outfits endemic to the mediums. Not to mention, if I was going to be wearing them successfully, I needed to get practice for later when I was older, so the younger I started the better I'd be able pull them off when the time came to really look badass. Flawless logic. Totally. The Looks I'd gotten from her, Ashely, and Gardevoir when I explained my reasoning were very obviously impressed looks awe and envy at my foresight. Definitely. Luna agreed with me after all, and she was my wise Big Small Sis.

We'd actually had to have the pattern for the jacket/haori combo custom made and a few of them custom ordered, but with the pattern on hand it'd be a simple matter of getting measured and getting new ones made whenever I outgrew my old ones. I was still debating whether to get Red's iconic hat. On the one hand I wouldn't really be Red without it, no matter what my birth and circumstances had to say on the matter, but on the other I wasn't really a hat kinda girl.

I suppose I was going to be walking around in the sun for long periods of time, and I couldn't have sun damage doing bad things to my hair. I might have to go for it just for that alone, nevermind my super fair skin that burned when the sun looked at it funny. Full finger gloves as well given that, I suppose, instead of the half fingers the character used. Combine with comfy cool looking boots and I was ready to be a badass looking bitc-

"Ow, what the fuck?!" I yelped out when a rubber ball smacked me in the head.

"Stop spacing out honey. We're in a battle, pay attention to your opponent. Also, language." She gave me this Glare about the "Fuck" and it was very hard to keep in mind I was in reality twentysomething and was therefore totally not intimidated. Totally.

So of course we answered in the only appropriate and reasonable manner for such a grievous slight against my person. With overwhelming power and extreme amounts of bullet hell Psychics and Confusions directed at Gardemom. She responded by redirecting them upwards, matching them with her own, or straight up seizing them mid air and dispersing the energy. All of this without moving a single centimeter from where she was standing. She didn't even have the decency to look like she was trying.

I couldn't even really use my psychic bond with Luna to come up with and execute a plan at the speed of thought as an advantage, since Mama and Gardemom had their own after so many years together. Didn't mean we weren't going to try anyway. I was pretty sure both Luna and I were objectively superior versions of our parents, a newer better generation to lead our dreams of power to the future, and that was something we could exploit. We were younger too, with faster reaction times and speed of thought.

They'd know we were planning something of course, Luna's rate of fire slowed down, as did the power behind her attacks, but this was something new. I'd heard of nothing like this ever being attempted before, and outside context knowledge was a hell of a thing. Instant Transmission Kamehameha, meet Teleport Charged Shaped Psychic Blast, you two would have a blast together.

We were pretty sure we had a good grasp of what Gardemom could do on the defense and how quickly she could react. We weren't arrogant enough to think Luna was fast enough to Teleport in and blow the Psychic before Gardemom raised a defense, but maybe we were fast enough to catch her while distracted by an unusually numerous barrage of attacks launched before the Teleport and use that to keep her from raising a full defense in time to block the attack, and that the shaped aspect of the blast would be enough to penetrate what she did manage to raise.

We noticed when the moms started readying for an offensive, it wasn't anything major, barely a whisper on our psychic senses, but enough, and so Luna started rapid fire barraging Gardemom. We got an instant's warning when she let loose her own attack, a barely there Confusion for her, but something that dwarfed anything we could do put together. It was enough warning. The moment the attack left Gardemom's mind Luna was behind her, releasing all the energy she'd been charging up since the start of the fight, compressing it into as dense a spear of psychic energy as she could manage.

It was a sight to behold. An extremely bright lance of purple light blooming out behind Gardemom impacting a hastily raised defensive barrier and penetrating through with a sound like a cannon firing and glass shattering. It blew her off her feet and into the air for all of an instant before she was behind Luna and launching her at me, knocking me down on my back, my sister lying in a heap on top of me. I belatedly registered the Confusion that started the end of the fight impact off to my right but couldn't really raise the energy to care. We were winded, bruised, generally shook up, and yet I couldn't keep the huge grin off my face or help the intense feeling of pride that I felt for Luna at this very moment. I hugged her to me and lay there on the grass, daydreaming of a bright future.


	5. Childhood 5

The training fights with the moms were a semi regular thing, but to be perfectly honest the only ones that weren't completely one sided stomps were the ones against Ashely's Police Issue Team, something that was apparently a thing that was. I guess it kind of made sense you know? Police forces in my old life had standardized training programs to produce trained animals to perform tasks for them and help them do their job, why wouldn't the police forces here do the same with the much, much more capable animals of the pokeworld?

The standard issue team of Snowpoint City Police consisted of a well trained Growlithe for general firepower, heat generation, and tracking capabilities, a trained member of the Starly line for aerial scouting and air support, and a trained member of the Machop line for close in brute force takedowns. It was honestly really quite well thought out, with officers ranked on their capacity to take on a specific threat level by the evolution stages of their team and their ability to effectively command them. Unknown threat causing damage near the edges of the city? A Staravia or Staraptor tier officer with Machoke support gets sent. Some random punk causing trouble downtown? A Growlithe with Machop support should be more than enough to handle them, and a Starly would be more than good enough to spot them at a distance if there was a positive id.

Ashely, I'd found out, was semi retired as a result of an injury acquired in the line of duty. Medical disability essentially. She'd been faced with the choice of full retirement or relegation to the lower tiers of crime combat and prevention, and as top tier standard issue teams like her old one were in high demand for city defense she'd been relieved of them and issued a Growlithe/Starly/Machop team. Incidentally, her Starly had been out looking for us way back when the school thing happened and had arrived seconds after we had.

But I digress, as one might deduce, Ashely hadn't been ready to let go of the police life and had chosen the technical demotion so she could stay on the force, something for which I was extremely grateful given how things had turned out for us. Curiously, due to the circumstances of her situation she'd kept more or less her previous pay rate as a combination of retirement benefits and salary. She'd taken the extra free time and money to train up her own private team and while I'd yet to see them or even know what its member were, not sure how that was a thing by the way since psychic here, I got a Feeling that it was something very impressive.

So Luna and I fought Growlithe, Starly, and Machop, often three on one or three on two, since compared to the level of fighting Gardemom and Mama demanded any one of those alone would not have been… fair. To put it mildly. At all. Honestly it was really only Ashely's excellent grasp of tactics and general high level command abilities that allowed the three on ones and three on twos to be a challenge despite the quality of opponent.

It wasn't long into the routine that Ashely got slapped with a big fat raise and given new starter standard issue teams to rotate out teams that started performing above the tiers she was allowed handle. I found this hilarious as fuck because she kept mum on how she was doing it and full on refused to say how, threatening to quit before talking, and especially if they tried spying on her to find out how. The brass had backed down in light of the influx of very well trained strong teams and the potential to lose out on more of them if they pressed. I was become training montage of death, trainer of police forces.

The moms thought they were being sneaky and subtle in what they were doing. Training both me and Luna to handle high danger situations by constantly exposing us to them in a controlled environment. I was being trained just like Luna was, if perhaps not as much given that I wasn't a pokemon and thus lacked their more rugged developmental profile, but we were both being trained. It was most obvious with Ashely, how she used the three on two fights to teach us how to handle being attacked by multiple wild pokemon, but Mama and Gardemom were the ones whose training didn't immediately click at first beyond learning how to fight a tough opponent.

That wasn't the real the purpose of their training, merely a happy coincidence. No, they were training us in how to survive an encounter with a truly monstrous pokemon attack. The pokeworld I lived in wasn't some horrible deathworld like you'd often see portrayed in ratfic takes on Pokemon, but it wasn't all happy cuddly clouds either. There were truly dangerous pokemon that any trainer could have the misfortune of encountering and be very lucky to survive. Beedrill hives were very carefully monitored for example, since there were very few things capable of fighting, much less surviving, a swarming cloud of angry meter tall waspbees.

We were lucky really, Sinnoh didn't have very many pokemon that were exceedingly dangerous and aggressive that you didn't have to purposefully seek out to find and confront. At that point, trainers took their lives in their and their pokemon's hands in the pursuit of glory and power. But our moms knew us. They could feel the drive for power, not necessarily glory, though we wouldn't reject it, but we felt such a soul deep need to fight, to challenge foes stronger than us and beat them by sheer force of fuck you and willpower. We were satisfied for now, training until we could go out and have our conquests officially recognized, to have our names immortalized as synonyms of pure power. And so at least for now they didn't have to fear us going out and trying to find an Abomasnow to fight or something like that.

Time passed like this, growing in power, in experience, and skill. We studied everything there was to know about pokemon, just so we'd be well prepared to face any foe that dared stand before us. The years closed in on the time I'd be allowed to get a Special Exemption Early Start Trainer License, because apparently not all the people in charge were entirely fucking retarded and just let some rando ten year old go out into a dangerous world unprepared. Thus you had to prove that you were capable of not dying horribly a day into your journey. Still, reading up on what the examinations consisted of I wasn't terribly impressed even by what little gatekeeping they tried to do. I hope that's just the past life experience making things seem terribly easy and not that they are in actuality terribly easy for ten year olds to pass.

It was thus, as I was submerged in study and training, that what happened the day of my eight year birthday managed to catch me completely and utterly by surprise. There had been no whisper of it in the minds of my mothers, which was particularly notable given that Ashely was still not as capable as Mama or Gardemom at keeping her thoughts from slipping out. They must have made a real effort to keep it secret.

Because my father had come to Snowpoint City.


	6. Childhood 6

We celebrated Luna's birthday with a small dinner party on May 21. It was a lovely affair really. We doted on her the whole day, but dinner was a work of art. Unlike Mama, Ashley was a great cook, and with Gardemom's help she prepared a feast. Mama was relegated to dessert, something which we we all agreed was more her style. Luna's plushie collection grew by a stuffed Ralts doll that had he cracking up when she first saw it.

We went out to the city the next day and visited one of the parks, just the two of us. We chose the one most popular with trainers looking for good fites, the one with those trainers that were battle crazy, went at you with everything, and held nothing back in pursuit of victory. There was a different park for the more casual trainers who just wanted to have fun, but really, me there? It'd be a slaughter. Eh, maybe we'll go seal clubbing for my birthday. The casuals could come up with innovative stuff just as much as the hardcore trainers, the difference simply lay in the frequency.

I was a regular at the park, often thought of as that unbeatable creepy quiet girl and her weird freakishly powerful Ralts. Because for all that this was the blood knighting crowd, for all that these were the strongest trainers in the city, they were the strongest trainers still in the city. They were the failed champions to be who still didn't realize it, or who still tried despite the realization of their own inadequacies, or of the difficulty of the mission they'd taken upon, they were those not willing to let their dreams die unfulfilled. I was not a champion to be. No, I was the champion to be, the legend made flesh. I was Red, and no local trainer had what it took to take me or Luna on.

When I got there I saw a new face. Not entirely uncommon, but there was a weight about him, potential, destiny, much more of it than that of all the regulars or other passersbies combined. A worthy opponent. I could feel it in my bones, in my very soul. A perfect way to celebrate my sister's birthday. We could tell when the regulars noticed me, the sudden rise in everyone's expectations, they expected a battle the likes they saw only rarely. Clearly the newcomer had made an impression on the others here and proven himself their better.

All that remained was to see if he was strong enough to beat Snowpoint's best.

I was sure we were all willing to oblige.

He had bright reddish orange hair and confident grey eyes. There was a self-assurance to him, a boldness, he knew he was damned good and he was willing to prove it to anyone who wanted a demonstration. He turned away from his latest defeated opponent, someone I recognized as one of the best in the city, with good combat instincts and a strong team. They recalled their pokemon, a battered looking Lopunny for the redhead and an unconscious Piloswine, exchanged the post battle good fight pleasantries, and then the local pointed to me.

The stranger turned and beheld who he was told was strongest. There was amusement in his face at first, he couldn't believe it of course, how could a child be so much better than all of these older experienced trainers? But his amusement was replaced with this intense look, eyes narrowed. He was good. He recognized a worthy opponent on sight as well and he didn't even have the advantage of psychic senses like I did.

"You're the strongest here. When I saw you I thought they'd played a joke on me, but you're like some of the others I've seen along my journey. You have more of what it takes than anyone I've met before, Little Red." He had a good voice, strong. "I'm told you only do one on ones for the serious battles, so I saved my starter just for you."

"Good." On many fronts. Someone with a destiny had called me Red. Today the Legend was truly born. Oh, sure, I'd had a reputation and since I never once introduced myself to anyone here they did call me Red or Little Red because of my hair and eyes, but the people here were, in the end, just the people here. This trainer was a legend in the making of his own, to defeat him here would be the true start of mine.

"You know, even now, feeling what I feel, I can't help but think I'm taking advantage."

"Then you're certain to lose."

"Hah! Bring it on then, Little Red! Go Infernape!"

It was a formidable specimen, corded muscles showing through its fur, and the fur itself was shiny and rich. His crown of fire burned hot, and I could see intense heat shimmers coming off him. But it was recently evolved, still unused to its new body, clumsy in some of its movement. He overcompensated in slight ways, leaning too far forward, not crouching low enough, but the most telling of, simultaneously one of the things that made it look so formidable, was that he was flaring his crown. It wasn't that hot naturally, he was wasting energy to look impressive.

We could exploit this.

Luna skipped forward and our monsters stood between us in the park's main courtyard.

"Infernape, Ember!"

He spit out a bright ball of flame at Luna. Strong, but still just a test, a gauge of our level. Luna didn't even have to exert any effort to crush the ball of fire out of existence. The Psychic that she launched was full power and full speed. It was a testament to the Infernape's reflexes that he managed to dodge any of it at all. As it was, it detonated against its shoulder with a small explosion of sound and a lot of force. It flew in a brief corkscrew before catching himself during the spin on the ground with its hands.

We felt their surprise, brief though it was, and then determination.

"Mach Punch!"

The reflex Teleport came almost too late, and half the spectators gasped, believing the match ended by the Infernape's overwhelming physical might and Luna's relative fragility. The other half knew us too well or had too much faith in us and kept watching as Luna fired another Psychic the very instant she came out of the Teleport flanking her opponent. A Psychic the damned monkey dodged blind on pure battle instinct, turned on a dime and Flame Wheeled straight at Luna.

We went with Protect. Because it was an excellent move in general, and because it was tactically advantageous. The Infernape barrelled full tilt into a barrier that was nigh unbreakable and stopped flat, stunned. Luna slammed a Psychic center mass that threw it against a tree hard enough to crack it. Then the fucking monkey proceeded to use it as a springboard and launch himself at Luna so fast he managed to clip her and send her flying. She wasn't as fast as our mother on the Teleport Counterattack, Luna actually got some decent air before she replicated the trick. Still, in an instant she was behind the Infernape, a differently tuned kind of Psychic hitting its back.

Psychic was psionic energy acting like a hammer blow of kinetic energy upon contact, it could even be argued that it was direct kinetic energy manipulation and well, we could go on and on on the finer points of the workings and mechanisms of our best attack. We'd started on the basics some years ago, and our best effort so far had been the one we used to land our first blow on Gardemom. But only because we'd been keeping the newer versions under wraps even from our mothers. Needed a few aces up our sleeves to land our first win against them, and my sleeves were very wide indeed.

The Psychic that hit was one of the more brutal ones we'd yet designed, though admittedly far from the worst one in our heads. Still, we made sure to aim well, just in case it proved to be too much of an attack. We weren't sure medical technology here could heal pulverized vertebrae and crushed spines. It certainly couldn't in my old life. Where the normal Psychic was a strong attack spread over a relatively wide area, this one was the whole power of the attack compressed into a pinprick. The detonation wasn't loud enough to cover the sound of the Infernape's breaking shoulder blade.

The following shitshow does not bear thinking about too much, but in the end we were both true trainers, and my sister and that Infernape true warriors. We knew the risks, we were prepared for them. Luna could have been grievously injured or killed by a strong hit from the Infernape, as it was she was pretty hurt from the glancing blow she did take, her bones with hairline fractures and deep tissue damage all along her left side.

Some of the spectators though? I felt their fear at the realization of what we could truly do when pressed, at what a true battle could be like and the stakes they were fought at. I had a feeling that more than a few of them would abandon their dreams as a result of this fight. I carried Luna to the Pokemon Center, she'd rather the pain and discomfort than going into her pokeball. Flint, as I learned my opponent was called, recalled Infernape and walked with us. He'd lost the battle fair, his a broken bone that important? Instant battle stopper. Unlike many others he didn't protest losing to a preteen. No, instead he was excited to see where I would end up like when I grew up and became a full trainer. We parted amicably, promising to keep in touch, and when he asked for my name I gave him the only one that I could: Pokemon Trainer Red.

We returned home so very satisfied. If he'd fought with his whole team we would have lost, we knew this, but one on one? We'd won, we'd beaten someone with true potential, with a destiny behind them. Our mothers though… They were proud enough of us when we told them, but for a moment we felt like we were drowning in their worry and fear. The cuddle pile that followed was very comforting and life affirming.

Still, I could Feel something coming. Destiny building up momentum. We would go back to the park on my birthday too.


	7. Childhood 7

The day of my birthday I awoke to feel the future pressing down on me. Today something would happen. Luna and I were up earlier than our usual as a result. I could have tried looking into the future, tried to find out what it was, but chances were good all I would get would be a head splitting migraine of epic proportions. If by some chance I did see more than my migraine it would be nothing more than brief confusing glimpses and scenes that made absolutely no sense except in hindsight, and even then... For all that the future wanted me to see it, it only wanted me to see it when it wanted to and no time else.

Still, I wasn't sure if it was some part of me somewhere deep within, or the future itself given a mind, that sometimes felt ahead when something momentous could happen. Sometimes it was even subtle, instead of the overbearing feeling of significance that had been leading to and pervaded today. I felt almost possessed, as we got ready for the day, and walked out of the house towards the city, barely remembering to leave a note.

There weren't many trainers out at the park that early in the morning, but there were enough to get a good din of combat going. I recognized most of the spectators, there was a handsome oldish guy with grey hair I didn't recognize but could _Feel_ from where I was standing. Hm, handsome oldish guy? Did I have daddy issues? I didn't pay them any more mind for the most part, ignoring the _Feeling_ coming from the benches. It was time to fight. It was about an hour to run the gauntlet of everyone there, sometime during the fighting the pervading feeling of momentousness mostly dissipated and I couldn't for the life of me tell what the fuck that had been all about. Fucking hated when that fucking happened. Oh something huge is going to happen, there, it's happened, what? You don't know what it was? Well too bad. Ugh.

Fucking Wailord sized butterflies, being fucking annoying and fucking enormous and just ugh. It was time to go home anyway.

But first, ice cream!

Well, Pokemon Center then ice cream.

When we got to the Center it was in sort of a an elongated crowd of some of the trainers from this morning, so Nurse Joy was a tad unamused by the sudden surge in patients, but she still did her thing and healed the lot of us, giving Luna a tiny chunk of processed Chancey egg to munch on so she'd be back to tip top shape. We took up one of the couches in the lobby while she ate her medicine, because apparently you had to eat it slow for some weird contrived reason. Made no damn sense since as far as I could remember from somewhere, the regular Chancey eggs were just cracked open over heads. But hey, what the hell did I know? I wasn't a pokemon doctor or nurse.

I was curled up against Luna while she ate when the old guy from the park sat across from us in a couch of his own. Khaki pants, red polo shirt, and an air of destiny that felt weird. Hm, still handsomeish up close, even if he did seem older than I initially thought.

"That was some impressive battling out there. Not often you see someone so young be so successful." His voice was smooth and strong, like that one college professor from my past life that always had fights for spots on his classes. "A very impressive Ralts too, reminds me of a Gardevoir I fought when I was younger, though she didn't have such a fascinating coloration as yours. Her trainer was quite impressive too."

"I see." So my more or less hikikomori lifestyle hadn't left me well versed in being capable of social interactions like small talk with strangers, sue me. My past life hadn't been good at it either. I'm pretty sure Luna was better at it than me. There was something in his eyes I couldn't decipher, and he seemed experienced enough with psychic exposure, or naturally resistant, that I couldn't just get it straight out of his head.

My instincts weren't warning me away from him, but my instincts couldn't be fully trusted with someone capable of defending their mind and who was also _significant_. Paranoia was the name of my game, and here was a stranger showing interest in both myself and Luna, as well as knowledgeable enough to notice that she was a shiny. I could brute force my way in, or try to anyway, Luna would help, or I could do it the awkward way and try to talk information out of him.

Right. Mind fuckery it-

Luna smacked me over the head, sending me a very clear feeling of "Stop being silly and either start talking or start walking"

But social interaction is hard! And besides, if we're quick enough we can hold his mind and make it so he doesn't notice a thing and then we could skip all the talking!

My sister was not impressed. I could tell.

And walking was totally not an option, the man had shown an interest, and not just the casual interest of the common trainer or lay person, no, he was _Interested_ in some manner I couldn't tell, and he was _Someone_. For all I knew leaving him with the knowledge of us could lead to negative things happening in the future and then where would we be just because _someone_ didn't want to engage in psychic surgery?

My sister continued to not be impressed. In fact she was so very not impressed by that particular train of thought that she smacked me again. So mean.

The man noticed the byplay, though I was fairly certain he didn't know what it was about or he would be, uh, indignant? Is that the right emotion to experience when you learn someone was considering the best way and how hard it'd be to crack your mind open for all of its secrets? Hm, yes, indignant seemed like it'd be the most appropriate word. Instead he seemed to be fascinated and curious about it. He was even more _Interested_ now, damnit.

"You have a very strong bond with your Ralts. I think I could count on one hand with fingers left over the number of pairs with bonds like yours, and even then, I suspect there's more to yours than others. And you," He turned his attention to Luna, "You're really quite the marvel. You'll be a terror in the battlefield one day." He paused for a second, considering, "Well, more of a terror."

He stood with that tired way people develop when they get older, and started heading out. "I look forward to seeing what you can achieve, maybe we'll even meet again."

For some reason he said the last part with clear amusement in his tone

I couldn't help it at that point, I'd gotten no information and he had gleaned so much just by looking at us. Luna would have none of it when it came to a psychic solution, so I resorted to the only option I had left. I picked Luna up and stood up after the man, letting slip a question rather more emotive manner than my usual.

"Wait! Who are you?"

He turned, looking rather startled, as well as another emotion I couldn't quite pick up or decipher. He gave me what could only be called a kind, and if I wasn't messing up on my social cues, reassuring smile before he answered.

"Ah, I'm sorry, I'm so used to being recognized on sight that I just don't have many chances to introduce myself and often it just slips my mind. I'm afraid my manners have atrophied like that. I'm Samuel Oak, the Pokemon Professor."


	8. Childhood 8

Motherfucking Samuel Oak strode out of the Pokemon Center like he motherfucking owned the place. I had no fucking problem feeling the smug, amused satisfaction at what was most likely a hilarious expression on my face. There was also a bit of puzzlement I couldn't figure out, but well, who could figure out the inner workings of the mind of a crazy genius?

I mean I probably could, but fuck it, too much effort to try, especially since Luna didn't want to do psychic surgery with me. Meeting Samuel Oak for my birthday in fucking Snowpoint City of all fucking places, whereupon he saw me fight my way through trainers many years my senior and was later told by him we were hella fucking badass was enough excitement for one day. We were going for our goddamned ice cream and no more bullshit was going to happen.

So of course that's exactly what happened.

Not really, they'd just run out of almond chocolate, so we had to settle for regular chocolate. We walked back home at a leisurely pace, momentousness building slowly in the background, being an annoying cunt. What the fuck was so fucking important about my eight birthday? Like seriously, it was nothing special in either of my lives, like fifteen years? Big thing in some cultures, like a sweet sixteen in others. Here? I had no fucking clue about that, but I was pretty sure that ten was the first important birthday, what with the Special Exemption Early Start Trainer License tests. Huh, what the fuck was the regular age anyhow? Eh.

We got home to an odd phenomenon. Which probably meant bullshit was going to or was in the process of happening. I couldn't help the pout that came my face, I really couldn't.

Gardemom was using her own vastly more bullshit phenomenal cosmic powers to dampen everything within the house. I couldn't see in, and I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to _See_ at all once inside without resorting to the kind of power and conflict one doesn't employ against their mother. They were scheming something. Couldn't be a surprise party, since it had been roughly planned over the last week, and, you know, I didn't have any friends.

They wouldn't try to make me make friends either, not after the first and only failed attempt. No one wanted a repeat of that particular shitshow. Well, maybe Luna, but she'd had _fun_.

We stood at the edge of the field, and considered whether we really wanted to go in and face whatever was being plotted in there. On the one hand, delicious food, dessert, and most likely some sort of stress inducing shenanigans, on the other lack of delicious noms and family time. But maybe we could get more training done. I let out a very defeated sigh. Food and family time was too much to give up over the possibility of shenanigans.

Today better not get any crazier. Fucking Samuel fucking Oak of all fucking people in fucking Snowpoint fucking City in my usual fucking park at just the right fucking time and at the right fucking moment at the fucking Pokemon Center.

Fuck.

It's probably a good thing none of my mothers can read my mind anymore. Now I just had to make sure not to also speak any future rant similar enough and I was golden.

We walked home like women condemned, heading towards certain death, or at least extreme aggravation. Well, I walked that way, Luna thought I was being overdramatic and just skipped forward frolicking through the snow like she always did, the traitor.

She opened the door with an exuberant "Ralts!" that meant, more or less, "Hi hi, we're home after tyrannosaurus recking some scrubs and eating some deliciousness!"

So I may have been a tad loose in my translation, fite me.

I was not so naive as my perfect Big Small Sis, so I entered the house ready for anything, my own well of psychic power surging forth and gathering energy under my skin, because Gardemom's trick didn't block my ability to use power inside of myself, only dampened it, and couldn't touch my own personal well of power at all.

We hadn't practiced much when it came to the more physical aspects of psychic power, because I had zero intentions of ever needing to have to tank a hit from anything, and Luna was a pokemon. Still, I'm sure I'd come up with something in the next few moments if I really needed to, necessity and invention and stuff, yeah? I'm sure I'd manage.

"We're in the kitchen!" Mama said, happiness and nervousness in her voice.

Luna beelined it there because them being in kitchen meant food and she's a glutton like that, even after ice cream. I suppose battling does work up an appetite, and she was the one doing most of the work.

I followed her and beheld devastation. In my sister's face. Because there wasn't actually food. Mama, Gardemom, and Ashely were sitting at the kitchen table, and I couldn't for the life of me decipher what they were feeling. I didn't mean psychically either, as the dampening field was still up, but their body language, expressions, and generally their whole body just seemed tense.

"Hey loves, come on, sit down, there's something important we need to talk to you about." Mama said to us, directing the second part towards me.

Those… those were not words that I liked hearing.

"Why?" I tried keeping in the instinctive threat response, I really did. The seriousness, the tense mood, the generally confrontational feeling of the whole thing. It set me on edge. Further on edge. The day had already done an excellent job of being a right cunt and it was barely noon. Judging by the alarmed looks on their faces I didn't succeed. The power I'd been holding slipped my control, bleeding out into static discharges and light shimmers.

They came half off their chairs, their mood shifting to something more familiar: worry. A lot of it. Luna was by my side in an instant, hugging herself to me, my power flowing over her harmlessly like she was a part of me. Which being honest, she was. I felt the safety of her presence next to me, helping me calm down and grounding out the energy running outside of my control.

"Wow, honey, nothing's wrong, calm down."

"Baby, it's okay."

And a strong feeling of reassurance and safety.

I couldn't tell who'd said what, Gardemom being the only obvious one, though Ashely was the one who called me baby most often. My metaphorical hackles lowered slowly, and Luna pulled me to my usual place at the table before climbing up to sit on my lap. Our mothers were giving me looks that I did not like sitting on their faces. It wasn't right, they shouldn't worry so much.

"W-What's this about then?"

"The last few months we've been discussing something that involves you, honey. It's nothing bad, it's just different, okay?" Mama rushed to reassure me when I started tensing up again. "I know you've never asked about your father, but I know you've wondered. You're a smart girl, I've seen you looking at Ashely's preferred choice of morning wear more than once."

She paused, as if searching for the best way to say what she needed. My brain took the time to puzzle it's way through the situation and finally settled on bad things weren't likely to happen and fully relaxed. If my father were anything bad, Mama would have thrown out the shirt long ago. I hugged Luna to me, trying to settle after two adrenaline highs in a row. There were only a few things this could be about, the mood would be a lot different if he'd died and they were preparing to tell me.

"I- We thought it best if you were to meet him, and well, we set about it but we forgot to ask if you if this was something you wanted. We think it'll be good for you, help you grow if you get to know him. He's very smart and knowledgeable about pokemon too, so you can learn a lot from him if you want."

She paused to take a deep breath before continuing.

"He's in town right now, and if you're willing, he can come to your birthday dinner tonight."

I was conflicted. Mind you, not for the reasons you'd think. No. I'd done my best along with Ashely, Gardemom, and Luna to work through Mama's issues and feelings of inadequacy with regards to her parenting skills and our love for her, but I worried that accepting her offer would cause problems. I'd be lying if I said I was uninterested in my father but quite honestly it was mostly just curiosity about who he could be, and a little about what circumstances had led to my conception, because Mama was very young. She'd had to have been like eighteen or nineteen.

"If I answer yes, will you take it as commentary on your parenting skills and our love for you?"

I took the exasperation on her face as mission success on that front. "I won't, you four have made yourselves very clear about that. Is that a yes then?"

I nodded my assent.

"I'll call him and have him come over for dinner then."


	9. Childhood 9

Despite whatever else I maybe have said or thought about the matter, I was nervous about meeting my father. I'd asked about why Gardemom's field continued being a thing after the talk, and it was wholly because Mama wanted to keep it a surprise, and knew that if the field dropped there was a significant chance I'd find out even if I didn't try to. Be it from an accidental stray thought, an accidental slip in my grip on my future sight, or the future itself deciding it wanted me to know and fuck what anyone involved wanted.

To be perfectly honest, she was completely correct, but it was extremely uncomfortable. I felt like a part of my brain had been cut out and I was missing half my senses, and most of my limbs, the less said about how paranoid I was starting to feel about not being capable of exercising power in an emergency if needed, the better. I was getting twitchy, and everyone was noticing.

When Gardemom noticed the actual level of… discomfort, shall we say, I was in, she didn't take long to offer to drop the field, surprise be damned, but being honest with myself, I kind of wanted the surprise. It wasn't something that had occasion to happen often. I could bear through feeling like I was a lobotomized carrot about to be under assault and needing to defend myself for a little bit.

Then she dropped the field and so I told Luna to put it back up. She wasn't as powerful, but I was willing and only needed it around myself and not the entire house and lands. Gardemom told her to drop it or she was grounded and there would be no dessert. Luna hesitated because she loved me lots and and I'd asked it of her. I argued that as the birthday girl I was entitled to be the one who decided whether the field stayed up or not. Gardemom argued that it was clearly hurting me and thus necessary to take it down. My counter was that slight discomfort wasn't hurting me and as such was of no consequence.

Then I got Looks from all of them.

"What?"

"Baby, you looked like you were in the middle of an anxiety attack headed for a second concurrent anxiety attack at the same time, somehow, and about to grab a knife and go guerilla warfare ninja Gallade, hide in the attic, and booby trap the whole house."

The Looks were now being evenly divided between myself and Ashely.

Ashely turned betrayed outraged eyes upon her… Huh, what would you call them? Wives? Was that legal? There hadn't been a wedding, or at least I didn't remember one, but well. Lovers? Committed Life Partners? Super hot trio if you ignored the fact they were my mothers? Question for later, I suppose.

"What? You're all thinking it." She pointed an accusatory finger at Luna, "You've been pretty much stuck to her side trying to keep her from flipping out."

"We were trying to be gentle, Ash, you know, keep from startling our high strung daughter. Also you were a bit, uh, out there."

"But not inaccurate!"

What even was my life sometimes. I swear, this day, and it was barely halfway through with a sure promise of _more_ coming our way.

"Enough." My voice cut the banter before it could really get going. While watching them go at it was usually amusing, I was so not in the mood, especially with being the subject over which they were bickering. "Just… Just let it up. Today has been a day, and I think a nice surprise would be a good way of making it better. Yes, this thing is wholly unpleasant in ways I don't think I'm capable of explaining, but it's a lot better when Luna is the one doing it, so please."

I closed my eyes, just focusing on my sister's presence to try and keep calm. We were too close for the field to keep us out of each other when it was her projecting it. Wait. I opened my eyes and turned to look to Mama. Needed to be sure.

"Meeting my father would be a nice surprise, yes?"

I had to be sure, I really did, with how today had been I really had to ask.

She looked startled at the question, likely because… You know what I had no goddamned clue why she looked startled and had no way of finding out without directly asking and I had no energy or motivation for that right now.

"Well, yes, very nice. He's a good man, very charismatic, talented, can be very loving. Honestly, we should have done this earlier."

"Okay then." And that was that. I cuddled Luna up to me, and the sounds of dinner being prepared rose up around me. Usually I'd help, but Luna was very comfy and without phenomenal cosmic power use I wouldn't be much help. I was, to put it bluntly, underdeveloped for my age. I'd checked. Doctors had checked too and all they could come up with was that this was one of the few things where I'd gotten completely fucked in the genetic lottery. I wasn't too worried, growth spurt time was still a few years away and those could do magic. There was a faint memory of a short scrawny boy from school who'd ended up NBA tall and with a natural steroid popping bodybuilder build.

So yeah, I'd probably shoot up to Mama's 5'9" or something around there when I hit puberty and I was totally not ignoring the photo albums that showed she'd had no such issues with slow early development. It was totally just quirkiness from father's genes. Oh fuck, what if he was super short and Mama just likes them small? Ashely was a nicely muscled 5'7", smaller even if not by that much, but Gardemom was much smaller and super dainty at the average height for the species of 5'3".

I was this close to asking how tall my father was when the sound of a plate being set in front of me caused me to open my eyes. The plate was, unfortunately for my hungry stomach, empty, but the rest of the table was set, and wonderful smells filled the kitchen slash dining room. The doorbell rang in the distance. Oh. How long had I spaced out? A glance at my poketch showed I'd somehow managed to vege my way all the way to 7:03 PM.

That was probably for the best. I may have actually gone guerilla warfare ninja Gallade if I hadn't just dived into Luna's presence for the intervening hours. My father would be arriving soon and the dampening field wouldn't be necessary anymore and-

"Honey?" Mama said from the doorway to the kitchen. I turned in my chair with Luna to face her as she continued. "I'd like you to meet your father, Samuel Oak."

…

…

…

Haha.

Hahaha.

Hahahahahahaha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

Yeah, sure, why the fuck not, motherfucking Samuel fucking Oak's my father.

Wait...

Fuuuuu-

Yes, of fucking course fucking Samuel literally motherfucking Oak, the motherfucking fucker, is my fucking father, makes total fucking sense, fucking somehow I'm sure. Really, totally, makes sense, and it's not like he's fucking twice Mama's age, oh, fucking wait, he is. Which what the utter fuck because she's pretty damned young right now, you damned cradle robbing dirty motherfucking old man. Which meant Things that meant that I really needed to get the story of how they hooked up out of one of them, because what the fuck. I needed to know if I needed to learn how to use my psychic powers to cause erectile dysfunction and avenge Mama's honor.

And you know the best part? It was totally in line with the rest of today. I fucking knew something like this would happen, I just knew it. I'd _Felt_ it all day.

Judging by the, uh, let's be generous and call them disturbed, looks on everyone's faces, I'd done something that wasn't good for the continued belief in my mental health and stability. Had I said that rant out loud?


	10. Childhood 10

I hadn't actually ranted out loud, thank fuck, but what followed was… Awkward.

You'd think it was because of normal stuff like an estranged father/daughter reunion where both parties are awkward and trying to reach out to each other and so on and so forth. No, apparently unhinged laughter followed by an intense scrutinizing glare isn't appropriate behavior, apparently. Bah. The Cradle Robber was easily mid forties, and Mama was twenty five. I was eight. _The math did not put him in a good place_.

But at least I wasn't losing it so bad the insides of my head were becoming the outsides yet. Completely. Upon consideration it could be that while I hadn't said anything out loud some of the meaning had leached out. Luna had dropped the field when The Cradle Robber was introduced, but Gardemom had sensed the shitstorm coming and put it back up focused on me before I could do _things_. So I gave it fifty fifty odds on that one. Luna was then told to calm me down, or so I assumed given that she tugged me back to looking away from everyone else and started doing mindfuckery to me. I let her, mostly, because I'd long come to accept that she was the less… mentally questionable one of the both us.

"Is… Is the Ralts doing what I think she is?" I heard The Cradle Robber's voice faintly in the background and Luna had to do extra work.

Then there was just indistinct whispering.

Luna did good work in rearranging my insides, she couldn't actually get rid of any of the outstanding issues at hand, but she was good and pushing them down temporarily so things could be civil was acceptable for now. She would help me work through them later, when there was time, less cradle robbing triggers, and less people in general. Luna put the finishing touches on her work, pulling up some emotions and pushing down others until I was actually looking forward to the evening.

At some point Luna must have given the all clear because I was no longer under a psionic suppression field, Mama and The Cradle Robber were sitting at the table, and Gardemom and Ashely were bringing out dinner. I chose to ignore the tense, if we're being charitable with adjectives, atmosphere and turned towards The Cra- a feeling of _things_ being rearranged- my father with a smile on my face. It must have been a very good smile because he had a strong reaction to it.

Poor Luna was working so hard. I should get her something nice. She tried very hard, and I tried very hard, but in the end there was only one way things could go until I had an _explanation_.

"How?" The bleedthrough of meaning made sure nothing more need be said to get my point across.

A complex pattern of emotions rippled through everyone, understanding, relief, concern, gratitude, affection, amusement- lots of more concern and a strong desire to start talking.

"It's a bit of an embarrassing story honey, are you sure you want to- Okay then, so after beating Samuel here at the Lily of the Valley conference finals nine years ago all of the trainers who were still hanging around and old enough threw the customary post-conference bash."

She looked really embarrassed now, and really didn't want to continue, but she soldiered on.

"Technically I wasn't old enough to be included in it, but I mean, I was the Conference champion and had already thrown down my challenge to the Elite Four and the Champion during my victory speech. Of course no one said anything when I walked in. Samuel was drunk already, because apparently he was always a big fan of the victory parties and wanted to enjoy every second of it."

Gardemom and Ashely finished bringing out dishes and took their seats at the table, and Mama got even more embarrassed, a blush creeping up her neck to her cheeks.

"And Samuel, he- he was really quite attractive back then." I felt The C- my father's indignation at the qualifier of back then. "And he was such a masterful trainer and already pretty famous in the Championship circuit, so- so we started drinking and talking about the fight and I kept getting him more drinks and he kept getting me more drinks, and, uh, well." She descended into an embarrassed puddle of embarrassment that threatened to set fire to the table with the strength of her blush.

The- My father was more amused than embarrassed, mostly at how flustered Mama was getting, but I was beginning to get the picture of what happened. It actually was pretty funny. I felt Luna sigh in relief against me at not having to try as hard to hold my mind and instabilities in place.

"And well, the morning after was, well, and since it'd already happened once and we're pretty convincing, things happened more, kept happening really, until after we smoked the Elite Four and stomped the Champion, then he ran out of excuses to not go back home and take care of his own affairs and then I found out I was pregnant and stepped down as Champion to raise you, uh, yeah. Lost touch, told him about you a few years down the line when I realized I-"

"Ahem." Ashely didn't actually cough to interrupt Mama, she literally said the word.

"When Ashely realized I had forgotten to tell him and told me I probably should get on that, since you know, he's your dad."

I see now where I got so many of my traits from.

"So yes, uh, that's the story."

I had to admit, I really couldn't blame T- my father at all on this one, or anyone really. Just irresponsible drinking, my favorite kind in my past life. Or was it that the blame lay on both of them? Didn't really matter, I guess. The victimless crimes that followed, plural intended given that she was pretty clear the affair didn't stop at the one time and she was the initiator, were a bit harder to get past, but I knew just how convincing Mama and Gardemom could be. There's only so much willpower in a person, and the two of them were prime willpower demolishers.

"Um, so yes, meet your daughter."

"It's a pleasure to finally meet you, Azula. You're as bright as your mothers described." Unsaid went the "And utterly terrifying."

"It's a-" I froze.

Wait.

What?

What the fuck?

Azula?

…

But I was Red. I knew it in my very soul in a way that was utterly undeniable. Luna knew it, could tell it wasn't just me imagining things and having delusions of grandeur. There was a big fuckoff sign written into the very fabric of my being that said so. Gardemom could see it too, though she hadn't ever gone close enough to see what it was, only that something was there.

"I- What?"

Red wasn't my name? Luna was with me on the what the fuck train on this one.

Had we… Just never noticed? Ignored less direct uses and substituted Red in automatically whenever we heard my name? Had all the mind fuckery done something somehow? Could it possibly be that my mothers had never actually called me by my proper name and just gone with pet names all of my life?

"Honies…?" Mama's voice was next to us. She sounded worried. "Is something wrong?"

"Uh. I, uh." It would be fair to say that Luna and I were having a blue screen moment.

We felt Gardemom's mind brush carefully against ours, unsure of what she would find and what kind of response she would get, but really, there were more important things than privacy right now, not that there was usually much of it anyway, like not being called Red and having a completely different name and having fucking never noticed.

Gardemom's wariness and caution went from that to complete disbelief in an instant once she grasped the issue currently looping through our minds, and I think that for the first time in her life she was speechless. Thoughtless? No, wrong connotation. She was something.

We continued not understanding not being named Red until a shout caught my attention.

"What the hell do you mean she didn't know her own name until just now?!"

My father looked angry, I wonder why.

"What?!" That was really loud. "You mean to tell me her psychic power essentially brainwashed her into believing her name was Red?"

"I don't care if it's more complicated than that! She didn't know her own name! What the hell kind of household are you running Asami?!"

Asami?

Asami.

Huh.

Okay.

I laughed. It was even a genuine laugh and not one of the crazier kinds that were more my speed. It silenced the room. Asami. Last name better fucking not be Sato because I think I might just go on a roaring rampage of fuck this shit and devastate the wildlife. Still, I guess I was learning how to use Flamethrower, and the turn it blue. Had to study up on the science of the coloration of flames. Oh, and Thunderbolt too, blue as well. It was destiny really, no mistake had been made, not really, just a tad slow on realizing my full Legend and Destiny. I mean, a psychic Red was clearly too much, I could have wrecked the curve without phenomenal cosmic power, it was unnecessary to that legend. No obviously the psychic power was for the other legend I was meant to create in this world.

No wonder we were so good at temperature control with our psychic powers. It was destiny. We reheated the food with a brief application of will, served us some of Ashely's delicious creamy bacon pasta, two of the fried breaded chicken breasts (or whatever the pokemon equivalent it was that had been used), mashed potatoes, a bunch of asparagus spears, and finished with some lemonade. All without moving from my seat or raising my arms from the table. Then Luna and I both proceeded to eat delicious food without using anything but our minds and mouths. I could _See_ the future in light of all of this already, and it was glorious.

Yes, all was right with the world.


	11. Childhood 11

Garde turned most of her attention away from her daughters when she felt them finally fall fully asleep. She turned her power to making sure they stayed asleep for the night, before giving the rest of the people at the table the all clear.

"Garde will make sure they stay asleep."

"More abuse of psychic abilities," said Samuel Oak, tone belligerent. "It's not like that's proven to be a terrible idea already."

"Fuck you Oak, we all know that it's been fully disproved. I keep up on the latest discoveries and studies in Psionic research. For obvious reasons."

"Not when we're talking about the kinds of things I saw happen in front of me just a few hours ago!"

"All of it was only when done badly. When performed by highly skilled and experienced psychics, willingly, and well documented, it was proven to be completely safe."

"I'm not sure anyone here qualifies for any of that anymore!"

A feeling of indignation swept through the room, matched in the faces of the two human women.

"You know Garde was fully qualified by the time we became Champions, and she's kept up her qualifications."

"Obviously someone at the certification office was giving preferential treatment to the youngest ever Champion and her partner, because our daughter is insane in a way that could have only happened because of psychic surgery!"

"Enough." Ashely Jenny was worried sick about her daughter, and the shouting match wasn't getting anything done. "Passing blame and shouting aspersions isn't helping anything. Our daughter is unwell in ways none of us could have ever imagined. I don't know about Asami, but I know I called her by her name when our relationship first started."

"You obviously can't have, or she would have known her name isn't Red." Samuel Oak was still well past angry and somewhere in the orbit of furious.

"I did, Oak, in fact, I'm pretty sure there's video evidence from that one time we tried force her to make friends." Ashely couldn't help the shudder that passed through her at the memory. "She always sort of froze when I did it, but I always thought it was just her not liking her name, so I switched to a pet name. It stopped happening, so I left it at that. Could it be her mind was literally freezing to cope with the identity issues?"

Garde sent out a pulse of agreement, followed by knowledge and understanding about a pair of peculiarities she'd observed in her younger daughter's being since conception, but had never taken a close look at until now.

"What?"

"Obviously, you must have somehow left it there at some point."

Denial spread through the room. Understanding of the true nature and age of the oddities. Their existence was an impossibility, and no psychic could ever hope to try and do what had, apparently, naturally occurred in their younger daughter, and to a lesser degree, their oldest.

"They were there from the moment you noticed she existed? In the womb?"

 _Before there was even a mind._

"I will assume your competence and ability for now, because I know you, or thought I did, remember what you're capable of, and because anything else is useless at the moment, but I will get Alakazam here to take a look."

Anger, understanding, worry, grief, self-loathing.

"Hey, none of that. You know Azula and Luna, the moment they could they closed their minds so tight not even stray thoughts leaked out. We published a paper on synergistic innate and cross mind mental defenses and the superior results the method produced based on the way they did it. Independent psychic pairs later confirmed our findings, if perhaps to a lesser degree than what those two managed. You couldn't have known something was wrong without mindraping them open or mindraping them when already extremely mentally compromised."

"That was you?" Both Samuel Oak and Ashely Jenny were a smidge surprised, doubly so after they spoke at the same time. Asami wasn't surprised, it'd been a paradigm shift breakthrough in Psionic defense for those skilled enough to manage even a part of it. It'd caused a stir in the law enforcement community when psychic criminals became even harder to crack than they'd already been. Everyone else had been interested in general because the psychics wouldn't stop very loudly raving about it.

"Yeah. I'm not a full on psychic like she is, but I have enough of it that with Garde's help I can get a taste of the world. The only reason she's managed to get in at all is because pretty much her whole world shifted under her, rearranged it in a way that she found pleasing, and kept being distracted enough for Garde to keep her defenses down."

"Back on topic," Ashely said.

"Err, yes. Well, after everything that happened they were surprised enough, and Azula satisfied enough with, well, everything, that they let their guard down. I was piggybacking off Garde, and we only got a glimpse, but guys, it's big. If you want to get confirmation from your Alakazam you better do it now while their defenses are still down, otherwise you're not going to get anything out of them"

"Damnit. It's too late to manage that. Transfer services are down across regions this late." Oak seemed to deflate on himself, before rallying. "Fine. What did you see?"

A brief exchange between Asami and Garde had the former taking the lead. "I don't know how, but there's something in her that was there from the very start that, well, put plainly, says "Red". A central part of her being is some sort of psychic structure or organ that says so." She shook her head in amazement. "It's unlike anything we've ever seen or heard about. If she hadn't been psychic it would have driven her to being a person known as Red, regardless of anything else. Most likely she'd have taken it on as a nickname. A lot of her personality seems to have developed from it and the other thing as the cores."

"You saw her this morning, I know you saw what she's like when she's fighting. It comes from there, apparently. We have for as long as Garde can keep them asleep to get to the bottom of this, after that the only thing we can do is ask them to let us see inside of them, and I don't know how that would go."

"Why?"

"Because, as you so tactfully put it, our daughter is insane. I'd normally disagree on principle, but it's hard to do when she's a paranoid psychic with issues of megalomania, self identity, and delusions of grandeur, except of course, that I'm not sure they're delusions when she and Luna are one of the strongest one on one battlers in the damned region already, and there's zero indication of her slowing down anytime soon. Did I mention paranoid? Luna would maybe let us, because she has less issues, but Azula? I can't picture a situation in which she'd let us in her mind outside of a medical emergency."

"But why does she have so many issues then? She's eight and unless you've somehow forgotten to mention a series of traumatic events, identity issues aside, she should be more stable than this."

The uncomfortable grimace from Asami and Ashely, as well as the feelings of discomfort radiating from Garde, did not give Samuel Oak hope that his day would get better.

"For some time now we've had this feeling that she knows more than she should, you know, beyond what should be possible with a gift as strong as hers. She was too… much. Of everything. By the time she was five she was behaving like a miniature adult with occasional bouts of childlike behavior thrown in."

Ashely took over, "About three years ago she went out early in the morning and forgot to leave a note. Asami was beside herself because she disappeared for hours without a trace, called the police, it's actually how we met. We're actually not sure that she didn't do it the way she did on purpose to get us to meet."

She shook her head. "That doesn't really matter in the end, what matters is that she went to the local school and essentially mind controlled her way through people there into testing out of school, bypassing every rule and regulation in place to get her way, and leaving behind some teachers with lasting psychic directives with regards to the way they taught their classes, all of this without realizing she'd done it."

Asami took over at this point, "That's when we started seriously training them. No, shut up," she bit out when Oak started to protest, "We know she's not a pokemon Samuel, but what would you have us do? Her gift was out of control and the only people safe from it at the time were Garde and I."

She took a deep breath. "So we started training her from there, as well as restricting her to the house unless Garde could be there to keep her from doing things without realizing it. I'm honestly surprised it only took a year to get her to fully seize control of her power, but she's always been good at impressing us. That's when they fully closed their minds. We kept an eye on her for a few months just in case she slipped up, but she never did. She took very well to Ashely too which was good. We didn't even have to make an effort to keep her from influencing her."

"Anyhow, I contacted the school and she passed the tests they gave her fairly as far as we could tell, so I let that stand since she was kind of a danger to others at the time, and well, perfect scores on everything but History? The papers she gave me were a clue, I suppose. Pokemon Trainer Red was filed under the name, everything else was official. Didn't give it a second thought."

"Yes, no point in wasting her time if she could do that at age five. Can't even blame you about not making a bigger deal about the name at the time, since she was five. That kind of thing is to be expected." Oak said.

"I digress though. We didn't know what to make of it, but the way she handled herself and understood things and the purpose behind them was too smooth. Too easy. The way she was very familiar with some things and completely clueless about others, it was puzzling. We've bounced theories pretty much since we noticed. Garde and Ashley had the right of it, it seems. A past life she nearly fully remembers."

Ashley was startled at that. "Well, fuck. What do we know?"

"It's hard to decipher, the memories don't seem to translate well, though from how integrated they are to the rest of her, and how so much of her personality developed from it, obviously she's managed nearly full access to them over time. No idea for how long. What little Garde can make sense of them, it was fairly normal life at first, followed by living in a pretty nasty situation, then plagued by worsening mental issues, pre existing as well as caused by her living conditions, that went untreated for too long. There's more, but it seems fairly disconnected from her and even more indistinct than the rest."

"Shit."

"How did she die?" Ashely's voice trembled as she asked the question.

"She doesn't remember, thank fuck." The relief in Asami's voice was as palpable as the actual feelings of relief coming from Garde.

"Well, fuck." Samuel Oak could not say this complete fucking clusterfuck was anyone's fault but circumstance. If she'd been less powerful a psychic or less skilled the problems could have been addressed before they'd gotten as bad as they had, and wasn't that a quality problem to be complaining about? _Oh no, my daughter is an extremely powerful psychic, woe is me._ "What do we do?"

"The only people I trust her with are all in this room."

"Agreed. She's too much of a target. Daughter of two Champions and powerful in her own right. So many people would love to get their hands on her. I'll begin work on psychology degrees, if people ask I'm doing comparative analysis on human and pokemon psychology. It'll cut into what little free time I have but this is too important. I'll take time away from my other projects if necessary. I suggest doing the same, that way we'll have as many hands on deck as we possibly can."

"You'll be of limited help so far away. Perhaps a move?"

"I have ample space in my facilities in Pallet, and my laboratories are state of the art, we could use them if we ever needed to conduct tests on her, or if the worst case scenario were to happen, treat her. I hope we never have to, but the option will be open that way."

"I think that may be for the best," Ashely said.

"We'll coach it as a chance to get to know you better."

"Then it's decided, we'll begin preparations as soon as possible."


	12. Childhood 12

I awoke completely refreshed after last night's debacle. All the bullshit from the future, literally fuckmothering Samuel Oak, an identity crisis, none of it mattered, because I was going to learn to shoot blue fire and lightning. I couldn't help giggling. The irony that I, Red, of all people was going to be flinging around blue fire and lightning, was really quite pleasing.

It'd take effort, mostly to get the color right, but I was sure a little application of Science! knowhow to Phenomenal Cosmic Power could easily get me to where I wanted to go. So, library trip. Chemistry and… I really had no fucking clue what I'd need to study to learn how to throw around lighting beyond somewhere around the vast field that was physics. I mean, chemistry is also huge, but I had more or less an idea of where to look. After all, burning stuff and how things burned was an important part of the field.

After a delicious breakfast of reheated leftovers, I left a note telling my still sleeping mothers we were going to the library and we'd be back for lunch. A bit of a walk later I found out something of a snag to my plans. Libraries don't open at eight in the morning. Fuck. Fuck it, we'll do it live. I half remember something about how things were done in the show and I had psychic powers, I'm sure I could manage. Luna was already casting about for suitable places where we wouldn't have to worry too much about stray fires. Perhaps the clearing Mama preferred for the more all out battles? And besides, not like there wasn't enough snow everywhere to smother a fire if we really needed to.

I picked Luna up, and with the clearing firmly in mind twisted the fabric of reality into us being there and not here. Luna insisted that's not how Teleport worked, but it was the only way I'd ever managed the technique. It wasn't quite as smooth as the real thing, and I couldn't play Teleport spam like she could, but it worked well enough, even if the colors were interestingly indescribable and I was pretty sure we didn't exist for an instant when I did it.

We'd seen fire pokemon use fire moves, but for most of them there was at least some sort of biological aspect to it either initiate it or enhance it. Still, the way they manipulated the energy of some of the more powerful moves was a good way to start puzzling out how to do pokemon magic instead of actually brute forcing the moves through science. The hardest part was likely going to be to tint the fire blue after I figured out how to make it. Figuring out lightning was going to be much harder though, they did whatever they did too quickly to really grasp in the instant we had to sense it.

So I grasped at my power, bringing it to the surface. I formed a ball of energy in front of me, probably a good starting point for other moves. Twisting the energy into something that felt more like what fire moves felt like was difficult. It fought me every step of the way, like trying to fit a round peg through square hole. Still, like almost any problem it could be easily solved by applying more force, so I devoted more of my mind to it. It was still not working, so I tried harder. And harder. I felt it the moment the ball turned into fire, fucking somehow. I also felt when my mind caught up with me about how much it didn't appreciate how hard I tried.

I woke up to Luna stroking my hair and a truly epic migraine. Also a lot of annoyance and worry from her, but well, wasn't the first time, probably wouldn't be the last. She sent me the information on everything that'd happened from her perspective, and saw through her memory as the ball of energy turned into a ball of fire, sensed how it was that the energy shifted. It would help for the next attempt. Next week. When I didn't feel like my brain was ready to pour out of my ears.

I sat up, and the world spun. Right. Home time, food, and then sleep.

"Luna."

"Ralts."

And we were home,

We arrived to something.

I wasn't sure what.

Our parents were all at the kitchen table, talking, all very serious like, and stopped the moment we entered the kitchen. They all turned to us, and I couldn't help the feeling that something momentous was about to happen. Again.

"Azula-"

I couldn't help the twitch. Intellectually I knew that was my name. Intellectually I knew that I'd probably heard it before more than once and just… blocked it, I guess. But I couldn't not hear it any longer, not after last night. Whatever had been causing that effect had malfunctioned long enough to break completely, and yet I couldn't help the clash of identity that it brought up when Mama called me it. It felt like my mind was fighting itself. I was Red. I was also Azula. They weren't mutually exclusive, the original Red likely had taken on the name as a nickname, but I'd only ever known myself as Red in this life. Fucking hell. At least I already had experience reconciling with a second identity.

Well, third, in this case, but I'm sure it translated well enough.

Probably didn't help I was essentially being called blue whenever she did it. I mean, I knew she wasn't, because as far as I knew Spanish didn't exist in the pokeworld, but I'd been fluent in my past life, probably still was, and I knew that the name had been made up specifically to suit the character's blue firebending abilities. I was Red, not Blue damnit. I was also Azula. Ugh.

I stumbled, but recovered and took my usual seat at the table, Luna hopping up onto my lap. Judging by the following uncomfortable silence and concerned grimaces in everyone's faces, my little mental short circuit had been pretty obvious. Lovely. Wonder if anyone was going to address that particular neon orange elephant.

"Azula-" Twitch. "We were discussing something pretty important. We all want you to be able to get to know your father, but his work keeps him very busy in Kanto, so we thought that maybe we could move there to be closer, since there's nothing really tying us down here in Sinnoh."

Oh. I'd been wondering how Luna and I would get to Kanto from here to do the whole wreck the League thing. I'd been thinking I was going to have to stow away on a ship or something. Huh. This was really quite convenient. It would give me two or so years to get used to the region before setting out on my trainer journey, allow me full access to my father's ranch and laboratories, and of course, guarantee me a pokedex. It'd also let me find out what pokeworld I was in. Let's just hope it's not even worse of a mishmash than my existence already made it.

I would miss Snowpoint deeply, it was a true winter wonderland, but destiny and power awaited. I could always come back when I became The Champion. As in, when I wrecked all the region's Leagues. Yes, that sounded appealing. I could even vacation here when I was in between regions.

"Will you sell the house?"

My question was not the reaction they were expecting. I knew this because they went from anxious and worried to completely surprised. They must have been expecting me to take it badly and not want to leave. My initial reaction to my father probably didn't help and they probably thought I wanted nothing to do with him.

"No Azula-" Twitch. She had to be doing it on purpose. "I hadn't intended to. I'll be hiring a service to take care of it for us so we can come back to it later if we want to."

"Good. Mom?" I didn't ask a full question, simply let meaning leach out with the question I directed at Ashley. It was high time. The mode of address caught her off guard, but I swear I got a sunburn from the radiant smile she gave me.

"I'll file for full medical retirement and take over as chief of security at Samuel's since he tells me he's been having issues handling it on his own."

"Good. When do we move then?"

"We have to take care of some things before we can, but in a couple of months at most."

"Good. Now, let's eat please. I'm starving.


	13. Childhood 13

The move to Kanto was a simple affair. Mama packed up some things, stored some others, and closed down the house. For all that she assured me that she was perfectly fine with moving to a different region, I knew a part of of her was terribly sad about leaving the beautiful snowy land of Sinnoh. I felt the same, but the League needed its new Champion. That and they were all oddly insistent on the move, so I wasn't going to say anything about it.

Mom, as was now Ashely's permanent name, got everything arranged with the Snowpoint City PD pretty quickly and left a broken hearted quartermaster about how there would no longer be a surplus of well trained standard issue pokemon for the force. I am become budget wrecker, destroyer of police financial stability. Still, with Ashely in charge, I had a feeling any attempt by Team Rocket to assault the Oak Compound, or really anywhere in Pallet, would go… badly.

Regardless, we got to Kanto with alacrity, and I found my greatest joy in life: Messing with Gary Oak. The little shit was so easy to rile up. Upstaging him was remarkably easy, and with Luna by my side, something that on its own riled him up even more because he didn't have a partner, it was hard to keep from going too far. Fine line from a little fucking around and bullying, wouldn't want to cross it. It actually seemed to do him good to be honest, within weeks he wasn't as unbearably arrogant, and he started hitting the books pretty damned hard to surpass me.

We were somehow a good influence, what the fuck. Shame it was all for nothing.

Regardless, my hopes that this universe wasn't a nasty hodgepodge of mix and matched bullshit were for naught, because Ash existed, and Gary upon witnessing people call me Red, never in front of my parents and usually more like Little Red, had decided to take upon the name of Blue, because I was his ultimate rival. Or something. Fucking universe, ugh. No, seriously, it was a fucking pain, because it left open so many fucking different ways for things to go to hell, and I don't know about the rest of the world, but I kinda liked my life and my mothers, even my cradle robbing father. And yes, Oak and Dehlia were boning, to the complete surprise of fucking no one. Good fucking grief but my family was, uh, interesting.

Ash I left alone, mostly in the hopes that my non-interference would let him develop as he needed to be the hero of the world I didn't want to be. As things stood I had a _Feeling_ I was going to have to deal with the fucking Rockets eventually, because Ash never really did, and holy shit these guys were offensive on a level I hadn't thought possible. I had zero illusions that I wouldn't draw their attention, all that was left was to see how hard they wanted me and Luna, because I intended to make them pay in blood for anything they tried. Also important were my nuclear deterrent parents, so things were iffy on that front. Hm. Rocket Boss Red? Rocket Boss Azula? I'd have to think on that one.

I just hoped that if things turned polyamorous on this thing it happened _after_ I left on my journey. I didn't want to be around to sense an orgy between my mothers, father, and Ash's mother. This was without even taking into account the possibility that Dehlia's Mr. Mime could be a factor in things. Oh my fucking god. Arceus? This swearing in vain upon a deity thing was annoying when multiversal things had to be taken into account. I was half tempted to start swearing to Inari Okami, the deity my past life had preferred. Maybe I could start a new religion? That cult leader thing always seemed like great fun, lots of profits, minions, really seemed like a great Idea.

"Father, could I ask something of you?"

Samuel Oak was more than happy for have an extremely powerful psychic to study, and I was more than willing to be bribed into letting myself be studied. I could feel him wince all the way from the console from which he was controlling the machine currently scanning my brain. I was not cheap to bribe, and he was under no illusions that I would let him continue studying me if he didn't acquiesce to my whims

"I can't promise anything, but I can try."

"I know I already have a starter, but it is tradition to receive a pokemon when one starts their journey." Oh, such delicious instant regret. He knew he had to comply and he was probably fearing I was about to ask for something ridiculous like a Bagon or a Larvitar. In a way, I was, thought I felt like my request was more… reasonable. "I have heard that in Alola there are Vulpix that are Ice types, a subspecies of the wider line. Perhaps, if it's not too much trouble, you could obtain one such specimen for me."

I was so mean, Luna too, enjoying my father's suffering.

"I… yes, of course. Acquiring such a pokemon should be doable."

"Good. Thank you father, Vulpix and Ninetales are such beautiful creatures, with their ice cousins particularly so. Or so I've heard. I would love to have one such pokemon in my team, a female if possible."

I had a feeling my father knew I was squeezing him for all he was worth, but it was hard to resist not doing so, and really, I had no reason not to. He was getting very valuable data the he'd likely use to invent some crazy way to counter psychic powers in rogue psions, least I could do for being a traitor to my kind and type is get all the bribery I could out of it. I had to make sure I developed something outside pure psychic powers though, or things rooted in the usage of, just in case that actually happened.

Could never be too careful. My abilities with fire were steadily growing and I was pretty sure I wouldn't need my psychic powers to make use of them soon. Now, where could I learn Northern Style Kung Fu so I could Azula properly? Turns out blue fire is as easy as being awesome like me, I guess. Once I managed to start flinging around fire reliably, it started slowly tinting bluer and bluer on it's own the more practice I got.

"Alright Azula, you can get up now."

The machine I was in was some sort of super advanced MRI machine. Then again it could just be a simple MRI machine and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Oh well. I sat up, my hair dragging over the edge of the machine's bed. I was going for knee length, and it was already mid thigh. My glorious hair would soon achieve its final form. Best part was, the upkeep was significantly reduced thanks to liberal applications of phenomenal cosmic power.

Our mothers continued to train us, and our powers continued to grow day by day as the time I could finally take the Special Exemption Early Start Trainer License exams drew closer. Technically I would become a trainer at age nine, but there were some rules being bent and bribery being exploited. Still, I was close enough to the cutoff that I wasn't losing any sleep over it and I'd be damned Gary got ahead of me a single day.

Soon we would pass the test and I would start my conquest.

"I've managed to find the Vulpix you asked for Azula." Small twitch. "If you pass your test she'll be registered to you and Luna, and you'll officially be trainers."

"Now listen carefully 'Zula," father was very serious all of a sudden, "I… worry that with all of the things happening right now, and this Team Rocket thing gaining strength, you'll be endangered by having us as your parents. You'd be seen as a target to be used to gain leverage over us, if not a target to be exploited in your own right given your abilities."

A constant fear of mine, and one of the reasons Luna and I trained as hard as we did. If the Rockets, or anyone, ever managed to overpower me, I would take them down with me in a blaze of gory. Kill as many of them as I could, incinerate their very souls in a conflagration that would remind the world why they should never mess with psychics.

"So I'm going to do something with regards to your and Gary's trainer ids. All data relating to you and him will be classified at the highest level, with only the Elite Four and their direct deputies being capable of accessing it. It'll keep you from being tracked, and even for those with enough access they'll still have trouble finding you specifically. Of the two of you, you're the one I worry about the least. You're strong, smart, and sensible, with a good head on you. Use… You'll be Pokemon Trainer Red, use the name. I know we've tried hard to separate you from it, but it's time to face reality. You're as much Red as you're Azula. At least this way the second identity will be one you're used to."

"Please be careful."

"I will."


	14. Childhood 14

I had, as expected wrecked the tests. So had Gary, who had realized he was older than me and attempted to use that to annoy me. He was bitterly disappointed by my complete lack of care and then instantly regretted it because I was still his aunt, vindictive, and had phenomenal cosmic power which I could show off with Luna. Ash also passed, somehow, apparently. Originally things had gone very differently the night before the new Pallet trainers went to get their pokemon, but in this world what happened was that there was a very large celebratory family dinner.

There might have been alcohol. Apparently my parents and Dehlia were still party beasts and barely needed an excuse. The jokes being tossed around by the drunk adults were eye racy as fuck, and while they were flying right over Ash and Gary's head, Luna and I got them no problem. I had a feeling that, uh, _things_ might happen that I didn't want to know about after the party wound down, regardless of whatever way such things ended up being arranged.

When it started looking like our mothers might not bother retiring from the dinner table before they got started we made a strategic retreat and brough Ash and Gary with us. I might have taken all of the water with me. They all deserved a good hangover. Gary, Luna, and I had our own rooms in the compound, but we had to get Ash to one of the guest rooms. I wonder if he'd somehow still get a Pikachu. Harder to oversleep and be late when you overslept at the place you were supposed to go to.

Sleep came to us easily, and we drifted off to each other's breathing.

When we awoke it was early, like we always did. I'd assumed that I would have to wake up my father to get the whole thing started on time, but apparently the man was diligent enough that even the raging hangover I could sense from him couldn't keep him from doing his job. Good of him, I was impressed.

"Azula." He was doing his job, but he was still in the classic hungover pose cradling is head, and the he sounded pretty miserable. "I'm so proud of you."

I could feel the emotion in his voice, the fierce pride of a father for his daughter accomplishing something great. I'm not going to lie I was a little choked up. It's hard to be stoic in the face of such raw honesty. "Your mothers should be here any minute and we can start the ceremony."

He pulled a Premier Ball from a drawer in his desk and set it before him. We were excited, anticipation building higher and higher. Finally, the time to go out and conquer was upon us, and the Vulpix in that ball would be the first step in our path.

Our mothers entered the room in similar states of hangover, but they were so proud of us. Scared, excited, sad, it was such a powerful cocktail of emotions. There were hugs and tears and everything, but the show had to go on.

"Azula Sato" Fucking twitch. I'd done my best to not learn my last name, because I really didn't want to know, but fuck me I guess. Fucking outside context references. I was pretty sure there was a legendary or mythical pokemon fucking with my life, had to be, for so much bullshit to pile on. One day I was going to find out who or what and kick their fucking ass, then catch them for being needlessly annoying smartasses. "You've passed all the requisite tests with outstanding scores. I present you with this pokedex, it's capable of acting as your Trainer ID, and well, as extorted, six more Premier Balls."

"Thank you father." Nope, no smugness about that. Not my fault the other two didn't know how or couldn't work him to get extra shinies out of him. I hugged him, then my mothers, and walked out to start a legend.


	15. The Path 1

We were getting to know our new A-Vulpix as we walked towards Viridian City. I knew that if I hanged around there was a chance of seeing a Ho-Oh, but well, if I were anyone one else, and didn't know exactly where to go to meet a bunch of other legendaries, I may have actually cared enough to stay and try to watch. I wasn't. So I only stopped long enough to let Vulpix have a few battles here and there against wild pokemon. We were still trying to think what to call her, but being honest we were coming up short.

She was a lovely pokemon though. Extremely affectionate, very sweet. We were in love. She was a good battler too, with good instincts, and we were already working hard to forge a psychic bond with her to make battling more efficient. We bumped into a trainer when we got to the outskirts of the City, and I let Vulpix have some fun with the horribly type matched battle against a Caterpie and a Pidgey. Can you say Powder Snow? At least she didn't know some of the more powerful Ice type moves yet, or it would have been even nastier.

I had zero fucking plans to stay in Viridian a second longer than I absolutely needed. Fucking Rocket HQ was right here, and I didn't know what the timeline was for the idiot Rocket Trio to hit the Pokemon Center. I had no desire to be anywhere near that. So I passed by a store, bought a few potions and pokeballs, thank you for the free Premier Ball with my purchase of ten regular balls, Ms Store Clerk, antidotes, and went straight through to Viridian Forest. I'll be back for you in a few months Giovanni, don't expect there to be a Gym left standing afterwards.

Now the big question was, did I help out the kids and make sure the forest was safer for them or just pass by? That beedrill hive from the anime was a fucking danger, but if I tried to, uh, remove it, I'd probably start a forest fire. Decisions, decisions. In the end, I couldn't be sure my mere existence wasn't enough to change things so that my annoying nephew and stepbrother in all but name ended up as meter tall waspbee pincushions. I wasn't a fucking hero, but this was too dangerous and really, how could pass up the chance to indulge in some pyromania.

I opened my senses to their fullest, Luna helping to sort out the enormous influx of information so I didn't get a horrible migraine instantaneously, and cast about for an enormous hive. It didn't take long. I was halfway there when I was beset by the most ridiculously dressed dork yet. I mean, I know I'm not really in a position to cast stones about outfits, but mine was at least cool, and when I grew up, fucking hot. The dork in samurai getup was just no. I was tempted to shatter the actual real sword because the dude couldn't be responsible enough to have it if he was jumping out at people with it but I figured if he was a danger he'd have been arrested already.

"I am Samurai, and every year I battle the new trainers from Pallet. You're the fastest one so far Little Red!" He said this while pointing his sword at me.

"Put that thing away before I break it and shove the pieces up your ass so hard they come out your mouth." What can I say, I still didn't like having a sword pointed at me. "Now put up or fuck off."

Judging by the way his face went white I can pull off intimidating pretty well. Good. He looked like he was having second thoughts. Not as good, but oh well.

"W-Well, fine, go Pinsir, assume battle mode!" Dork.

Oh, I knew the perfect name for Vulpix.

"Yue?"

She considered it for a second before nodding and stepping forward.

"A white Vulpix? I've never heard of anything like that!"

"That's fine. Powder Snow." And my little fluffy ball of ice and fairy bullshit blew out a stream of snow at the Pinsir.

"But Vulpix are fire types!"

"Keep it up. Maybe we'll get a Pinsir snowpokemon."

Samurai was so blown away by the ice Vulpix we did actually end up with a frozen Pinsir statue. Seriously? No wonder this kid loses to the Pallet trainers every year.

"Return Pinsir! Go Caterpie, Tackle!"

Yue dodged the tackle, without having to be told, which was great because it meant she was learning.

"Tackle back." I mean, why not, the super ultra minor leagues were about the only place Yue would ever get to actually use Tackle. She hit the green worm full body and sent it rolling for a couple meters. It got back up and started glowing. A mental nudge kept her from continuing to attack while the Caterpie was evolving, and before long a Metapod stood in its place.

"Aha! Now that my Caterpie has evolved into Metapod it shall beat your ice Vulpix!"

I couldn't help it. I really couldn't.

"Uhuh. Powder snow. Make me another statue please, Yue."

The Metapod froze even faster than the Pinsir, since it wasn't moving at all.

"But how?!" Seriously? "Come back Metapod! You've defeated me with such ease Little Red, you must be a truly talented trainer!" Well, he wasn't wrong. I was hella amazing.

"Thanks. When a Pallet trainer called Gary or Blue passes by, tell him his aunt said hi. From Pewter." The fine art of Oak Baiting, truly a noble calling.

I recalled Yue, left Samurai, and kept going towards where I felt the Beedrill hive. Couldn't have her out in case I needed to make an emergency escape. Night was falling, so the chances of catching the whole swarm sleeping on the fuckhuge tree ahead were pretty good. Aces. I closed my eyes in concentration. Not like I needed my eyes to aim anyway. Or aim at all really, given the size of the hive. It was a huge shame about the tree. It hurt to burn something that big and old, but family was more important. Also, fire.

I gathered as much power as I could, until it was leaking from my metaphorical psychic grip, I suspected my eyes were glowing beneath my lids, and sparks jumping from the tiniest movements. Right then. Deep breath in, arms thrust forwards, palms roughly projecting the cone I wanted, exhale, and then the world was blue fire. I aimed for the top of the tree, letting the fire wash over it for a few seconds, had to make sure the Beedrill sleeping there burned first, then swept the fire down the trunk, cooking the Kakuna attached to it. I didn't let up until I couldn't feel a single one of them left, and then the fire that was left lost its azure hue without my power feeding into it.

I barely caught myself on the way down. Managing to fall to hands and knees, breath ragged and barely keeping from passing out. Luna did her best, channeling as much of her own energy through our bond towards me. After a few minutes I managed stand back up. That had been the biggest act of power I'd ever attempted, and I couldn't wait for the next opportunity. Such a rush, even if the aftermath was unpleasant. A quick check of my poketch showed Pewter City to my north, with the main road leading to it a little to my west. Excellent. We could make a little more progress before sleeping.

I found a nice clearing a couple hours later and after quick check with my powers, felt no nearby pokemon. I let Yue out of her ball, and curled up to sleep in my sleeping bag cuddling the both of them.


	16. The Path 2

I awoke achy. I missed my delicious bed. We could teleport back and forth from my furthest progress to home, but that wasn't how you did the pokemon journey thing. It felt utterly wrong to even consider. Yue was frolicking around the clearing and Luna was being lazy and refusing to get up. That was fine. I picked her up in my arms and deposited her inside my zipped up jacket, rolled my thin sleeping bag and put it in my messenger bag. Now, food. Judging by the Yue's stained muzzle, she'd eaten something already, but I offered her some travel food anyway. She refused, so I munched on my nutrient bar while walking towards Pewter. Eventually Luna woke up and partook of noms as well, but declined on walking, the lazy bitch.

I was on my way out of the Viridian Forest, going as fast as I could manage without running, when I spotted what would likely be the greatest ever reward to likely come out of my Kanto trip outside of Luna achieving Gardevoir status. It was an innocuous weed for anyone who didn't know what it was, with green leaves in a fan pattern extending longer towards the middle with a rippled texture, flowers covered in a sheen of pearly white that upon closer inspection turned out to be thousands upon thousands of white small hairs.

Holy fuck, if only I was ten or so years older. I needed a plant pokemon with either plant tending abilities or the ability to absorb the properties of other plants. And seeds, lots of seeds. Well, that and testing. Couldn't be sure that just because it looked exactly like pot that it was pot or worse actually pot that had somehow developed toxic properties due to random chance. If memory served, I needed mammals to test the plant. Right, Rattata capturing time.

Two rats later and a messenger bag hopefully full of a deliciously smelling not toxic pot plant I was back on my way to the Pewter Pokemon Center. Now if only I knew how to dry and cure the plant. Mother was a successful pokemon trainer in her day, maybe she could put me in contact with some plant gym leaders or trainers who may know something. Oh, maybe Brock would know, the guy was a Badass Jack of All Trades, Master of Quite a Few.

The stay at the Pokemon Center was short, consisting only of having Luna, Yue, and the rats checked out and a night to sleep through in an actual bed. Tomorrow I would get my first badge and I could go on to Cerulean City and smash their face in as well. I was in some weird mishmash of the anime and games so there was a chance I'd encounter a Charmander and a bunch of Squirtles and I did need to expand my team. Decisions.

A short walk later and I found myself facing Brock across a rocky battling field. I was actually impressed by how not fake the field looked, even the lighting was perfect and made it look like we were actually standing on a craggy mountainous field and not the inside of a building. Best part however were Brock's feelings. I half remembered him being rather contemptuous of Ash when they faced off, something about not being prepared enough or some such. I could feel his contempt without even trying, and I suppose that were I anyone else he had some grounds for it since I was a rookie trainer who couldn't have spent a second more than the bare minimum getting to his Gym from Pallet given how quickly I'd made it here and the lack of Pokemon other than Luna and Yue.

He couldn't know I was perhaps the strongest human psychic on the planet, with perhaps exactly one peer in that regard in the form of Sabrina, and that Luna was older than me, if only by months. From what I'd read most starters were, while not newborns, very young as a way of ensuring they'd bond with their trainers and while bred for fastest maximum growth it would take a few weeks for an experienced trainer to get them up to standards for even the lowest tier team of a Gym, much less the average new trainer.

"Gym Leader Brock, I challenge you for the Boulder Badge."

"You broke the record for getting here from Pallet by over a week." He said, cold, angry even. I opened my senses a bit, trying to feel the nuances behind the feelings and saw dozens upon dozens of new unprepared trainers come up to him, full of arrogance or naivete thinking they could take on a Gym Leader right out of the starting line. The adequate response should have been to be humble, to not antagonize him, but I was arrogant, I was not some no name trainer kid. No, in the end I wouldn't be humble, couldn't be humble, and I would crush him just as easily as I had all the trainers on the way up to here.

"It was hardly difficult getting here, it's practically a straight line from Pallet. An idiot could have gotten here almost as quickly as I did." His anger exploded from a light simmering thing to a burning thing that was seriously scary. He loved pokemon, his dream of being a breeder was testament to that, to have to hurt so many pokemon from inexperienced trainers burned him, and to see me be so blase about things, to think that I could walk up to him without spending time to train up for the fight, it made him furious.

"It wasn't a compliment. Those other trainers who took their time and spent it training with their pokemon, preparing for the first difficult battle they'd face in their career. You instead came here directly, with a new pokemon and zero experience in battling. I'll give you a chance to back down and take the time to properly prepare for this battle. Otherwise, place your trainer ID into the pedestal rising to your right and be ready to learn the cost of your arrogance."

I slid my pokedex into the slot, my name and information flashed across a screen next to the slot before a "Authenticated" superimposed itself over it. A screen flashed to life behind Brock and myself, our pictures facing off. There was no backing down, we would fight and I would win, there was no other option.

"The battle for the Boulder Badge between Gym Leader Brock and Pokemon Trainer Red begins now. Ready your pokemon, no substitutions allowed, two pokemon per participant maximum." Said a computerized female voice. I swear I could hear the thematic battle theme start up in the background.

"Luna."

"Go Onix."

Luna walked up to the field and Onix materialized on Brock's side.

"Commence battling." Said the computer again.

"Onix, Iron Tail."

I was surprised, if only briefly, at Brock's aggressiveness and at the horrifyingly effective choice of attack to use against Luna. It was, nevertheless, laughably slow and easy to evade. I didn't even have to tell Luna to Teleport away from Onix, and I hadn't even given the order to blast back when a Psychic went flying down range at blinding speeds. Half strength, it seemed. Luna wasn't being serious. Onix was not so easily capable of dodging as Luna, both by virtue of not being able to Teleport and by being a fuck huge rock snake the size of some houses. It hit like a wrecking ball and laid out Onix over the raised section to the back of the arena, the head almost hitting the back wall behind and to Brock's right. The attempt to get back up was admirable, but it collapsed back down to the floor before it could finish lifting its body back up.

Well, good thing it was only half strength. I didn't want to make Brock's life any harder than it already was by wrecking his Gym via rock snake through the structure.

"Onix is unable to battle. Please send out your next pokemon."

He was rattled, to see his strongest pokemon so easily defeated, swatted down like a fly, it must have been unprecedented, or at least when done so by a new trainer and an unevolved starter. I could feel victory within my grasp. I mean, not that it had even been in doubt, but still. He recalled Onix and palmed a pokeball containing what I assumed to be his Geodude.

"Go Geodude! Rock throw!"

A flare of psychic energy enveloped the rocks and sent them back at Geodude, grazing the pokemon.

"Luna." And she ended the fight. She grasped Geodude and repeatedly slammed him into the ground before launching it out of the battlefield.

"Geodude is unable to battle. Winner: Pokemon Trainer Red!" A compartment on the pillar opened with a Boulder Badge inside.

"It was a pleasure Brock."

I grabbed my badge and Pokedex, and with a slight effort I reached out to my room in the Pokemon Center and twisted, then we weren't at the Gym anymore. Two years teleporting and fuck me if the in between wasn't still fucking weird as fuck.

Maybe Nurse Joy knew how to dry and cure plants? She probably used plants with medicinal properties all the time, she had to know. I didn't think Brock would be in the mood to help.


	17. The Path 3

As it turns out Nurse Joy had a machine she let me borrow that somehow or other did the drying and curing in the space of an hour. No clue how it worked since it was a literal black box, but the end result looked and smelled just about right so it went into a waterproof jar in my messenger back. Now I just needed to arrange a way of testing it on the rattata I'd captured.

I set out for Cerulean late in the morning. Nearly noon really. For all that I had the energy of childhood behind me, there were few forces in this life or the previous one capable of making me be productive in the mornings when I didn't have to after an accomplishment. Given that I blew through the first Gym in record time, I had no need to hurry and thus no need to be industrious.

I checked my poketch map to see about doing the whole Mt. Moon thing, which I wasn't very happy about. Currently my map said I had to go into the tunnel in front of me, so I imagine this was the entrance to the aforementioned Mt. Moon.

The tunnel was surprisingly well lit and labeled, which is quite nice because I had zero desire to waste time wandering around. At first I encountered some trainers hanging around in some of the more cavernous (hah!) chambers near the entrance. They were faffing about training and catching pokemon. A few challenged me to battle, but after they saw the first one get smashed by Luna the number dropped. Yue got some good training, and grew strong enough to upgrade from Powder Snow to Icy Wind.

Normally I wouldn't hesitate to wipe the floor with everyone in sight with just one pokemon, numbers advantage or no numbers advantage, but I didn't fancy traveling with a worn out pokemon in a cave full of wild pokemon even if I was as strong as she was when it came to punching people with my mind. One can never be sure when bullshit is just around the corner.

The battles were simple affairs, one had a sandshrew that was surprisingly fast and the second a rather unremarkable Zubat. I'm pretty sure Sandshrew guy knew I was toying with him, he gave this look that just screamed "Damn you, you suck but there's nothing I can do." and told me he'd see me at the Conference. Zubat dude was a lost cause and I'm pretty sure that he was convinced he had me on the ropes for half the battle before a "lucky shot" knocked down his flying cave cancer. Yes, I didn't like dealing with zubats, yes I left flocks and flocks of possibly dead zubats all over the cave floor whenever they strayed too close to me. I was not going to get pokemon rabies or some other such disease because I got bitten by flying cave cancer. The other fights were even less worth commenting on, and ended with icy statues.

It wasn't until I got to the later levels of the cave system that I realized that yes, bullshit was waiting for me, as evidenced by two Rocket grunts being cunts and threatening to steal Luna from me. These mooks were head and shoulders above the people I'd fought against so far, or at least their pokemon were, but well, that wasn't saying much. Also I wasn't an idiot kid like Ash had originally been and had no compunctions against cheating with my own phenomenal cosmic power against criminals threatening to kidnap my sister in all but blood. Also, and this was important, these guys were definitely mooks. They'd have needed a few more of them at the same time to be a legitimate threat, and worst to worst, I could do my Charizard X impersonation and flood the tunnels ahead of me.

Also, type matchups. Hilarious. Yue and Luna stood before a pair Koffings, an Ekans, and a Raticate. The living pollution factories squished against the cave wall somewhere far back from twin Psychics, courtesy of Luna and I, and Yue faced off against the Raticate. The Ekans though, that one got closer than I'd have preferred. It struck with a speed I wasn't expecting and I barely got out of the way before I got a bite to the face. Luna turned around to deal with it, which ended similarly to how the Koffings had, and I punched the Rockets in the mind hard enough to knock them unconscious.

Yue had dealt with the Raticate on her own, but it seemed like it had gotten a good bite in before going down and she was bleeding and limping a little. I recalled her, after doing my best to treat the leg, and turned my attention to the monumental problem that presented itself before me.

As I stood over the unconscious bodies of the embodiment of what's wrong in the pokeworld, I realized that unless I wanted to end up like Ash with Rockets chasing me around trying to take my super rare shiny pokemon, and myself, because I had felt the sudden spike of greed at realizing they'd stumbled onto a psychic kid with a very rare psychic pokemon when I blasted one of the Koffings. Oh sure, they'd gotten beaten, but the information alone would see them well rewarded. That had been what was going through their minds when I smacked them. I needed to do something to keep word from getting out. They needed to get it right only once, I needed to get it right all the time. The odds were on their side and I couldn't bear the thought of losing Luna.

I felt my left hand close around the handle of the knife I kept at the small of my back. I'd done my research when I was preparing to leave on my journey. The Rockets were scum, utterly and unequivocally. They stole, they kidnapped, they intimidated, and those they couldn't intimidate they either hurt until they broke or they killed when it was easier or expedient. Two less of them would be no great loss to the world. Fucking up their brain was too dangerous. It wasn't my specialty, and I couldn't be sure that I'd be clean enough for someone not to notice the mindfuckery. They presumably had access to older more experienced psychic pokemon, possibly even Sabrina. Who knew how good they'd be at retrieving memories I didn't want them to even after I tried to destroy them? I couldn't risk it.

I had to do it. It was my only choice, really.

The knife slid out with a whisper of steel against nylon, the blade a smooth matte black. I let my mind expand, feeling out for people, trying to make sure no one would be there to witness what I was about to do. I lifted both of them with an effort of will, moving them into a recessed alcove out of the way of the route to Cerulean City. I angled the first one of them so the artery was facing away from me and put the knife to his neck.

My hand was shaking.

I saw in my mind an image of Luna being taken from me by faceless Rocket grunts, of me being taken, Sabrina destroying the person that I am and turning me into a mindless slave, used and abused by Giovanni. A puppet, a tool, a toy. I saw Luna exploited even worse. I saw the both of us obediently on our knees before Giovanni, ready to please him at any moment. I couldn't allow it. I wouldn't allow it. It would happen if I let these grunts go back to their leaders with knowledge of me this early on, even if they didn't know they knew it. I needed time to grow stronger, to armor myself in psychic might and a team of monsters capable of taking on Champions and come out ready for more. What were two lives for Luna's and my own? Hell, what were the lives of the entire Rocket organization against even just one of ours?

I didn't even notice as the knife cut through his neck, barely felt the hot splash of blood over my hand. I don't remember killing the second one either. I rinsed off the blood on my hand and the knife with water from my canteen and walked away, Luna in my jacket hugging me as best she could, sending soothing feelings through our bond. My head hurt.

I felt the next Rocket with my open senses before she saw me and a blast of psychic power scrambled her mind into unconsciousness. This repeated itself until I saw the outside world once again. I left five Rockets drooling on the cave floor by the time I made it out. They were probably vegetables now, but they hadn't seen me, and no one would be able to connect me to them. The sun was dipping down in the sky and if the map was right I still had a few hours of walking before reaching the pokemon center.

The hours passed by in a blur, not quite registering beyond what the changes of sunlight did to the road ahead of me. The sky was so very red, the clouds were so very red too. A bloody sky fitting of what I'd done. It seemed to go on forever, hours and hours of red skies but from one moment to the next it was dark and I was looking at the friendly face of Nurse Joy.

"Hello dear, do your pokemon need healing?"

Perhaps I was overreacting, but it felt wrong to talk to someone after having done what I had. There she stood, hands clean of the blood of others, a paragon of goodness, of hope, of healing, and life. How could I stand before her after killing two people even if in my eyes they were perfectly acceptable targets?

"Are you okay?"

I'd been staring. Awkward.

"I… I don't think so. Need healing, I mean. Well, Luna doesn't but I'd still feel better if you could give her a quick checkup. Yue had a run in with a..." Not a Raticate. Anything else similar enough to distance her wound from the fight she'd incurred it in. "uh, there was this super baby Onix, but we left it alone after we got away."

"Of course, step onto the diagnostics plate over here, and place your other pokemon's ball over here." She said, pointing to a square device mounted on her side of the counter, a slot for a pokeball next to it. Luna seemed reluctant to let go of me, but a mental nudge convinced her to go. I wanted to make sure she was fine. She had to be fine. I had to be sure she was fine. I placed Yue's ball on the slot, and she teleported to the plate, but I could feel her worry at leaving my side.

Nurse Joy typed away at her terminal and the plate glowed a little before falling silent again. She tapped some more and grabbed a printout from somewhere under the counter I couldn't see. She read through it, taking note of some detail or another before turning her attention back to me.

"Good news, this little lady is in perfect health. Better than perfect even, she seems to be long overdue to evolve so be prepared for it happening soon." She'd been overdue to evolve for years now, but she seemed to like being a Ralts for now, so I doubted it.

That was unexpected, but expected. I knew Luna had surpassed the point of evolving some time ago and simply refused to do so, but I didn't know scans could show this. Maybe she was waiting for a worthy opponent, I know I would. What better test than that taken with a handicap, until you could no longer hold onto the handicap and were forced to drop it and go all out?

I'd long ago accepted this and was more than okay with it. She'd evolve whenever she wanted to.

Nurse Joy keyed my pokedex to one of the bedrooms at the center and it wasn't long before the door closed behind me. The room was dark, with no windows to let in ambient light. That was fine. I stumbled my way to the bed, falling onto it the moment I felt my legs bump the edge. Sleep. Sleep would make everything better.

But sleep wouldn't come.

I kept seeing their faces, kept replaying the moment I slit their throats, the hot blood on my hands, the feeling of their lives burning out and vanishing altogether from this world. Over, and over, and over again. I curled up against Luna, feeling her soothing presence seep into me. Eventually I drifted off.


	18. The Path 4

I woke up feeling like I only slept a couple hours. Which was a distinct possibility, but I had no success in falling back asleep. A glance at my Poketch showed me 7:17 AM, way too damned early. Hopefully the gym opens early and I can just get my day started with a sound smashing of water pokemon.

Morning routine later and I was sitting down at the center's cafeteria with some surprisingly delicious bacon and sausages. There was also some scrambled eggs on the plate but really who cares about those when there's bacon and sausages? I wonder… A quick look around spotted some muffins and grated cheese. I was having me a breakfast sandwich. Or three. That's how, after asking Nurse Joy for directions, I found myself walking to the Cerulean Gym sipping from my canteen and eating a sandwich. After all, what was the point of portable foods when you didn't utilize them to full advantage?

The gym was a gaudy thing, a domed affair with yellow and pink stripes down the dome and columns supporting decorative waves along the lower portion. All of it topped off by a ginormous Dewgong on the front. Really not very impressive. Doubly so because I wasn't expecting much given that Misty was still at least over a week away from reaching Cerulean and the other Waterflower siblings were… unimpressive.

So when I stood across from Daisy Waterflower and she sent out a Seel, I was already expecting a lot less than what had come out of my match with Brock. I had vague memories of them simply giving away badges, but clearly I must have been misremembering. I was glad for that, I'm not sure how I would have felt about a handout. I sent out Luna and she teleported on top of one of the platforms floating in the pool that was the battlefield.

"Seel, water gun!"

It surfaced and spit out a pressurized jet of water at Luna, much stronger than I'd expected, forcing Luna to teleport away to another platform. She countered with a quick blast of kinetic energy, a Psychic in essence. The Seel dove back into the water, managing to shed a portion of the blast into the water around it, creating a geyser of spray, but I saw its trajectory change from forward and down to backwards and down. Hit to the lower back most likely.

"Oh no Seel! Don't give up, Ice Beam!"

'Protect,' I told Luna through our bond. She raised her arms, for all appearances miming an invisible wall, and then the beam of elemental power slammed into a pane of energy. Again, I felt more power behind the attack than I'd expected, throwing out any ideas that the first attack might have been a fluke.

"Keep at it Seel, we can break through!"

Not bloody likely, more powerful than expected it may have been, but that was still a Protect from Luna. Gardemom couldn't break Luna's protect without really throwing her weight around, a strong Ice Beam was not going to be enough by far, and I could feel Luna had enough energy to hold the barrier for some time still. Still, credit where it's due, I could see a mushroom of ice growing outwards from the impact point, frost growing on the platform and freezing the water around it.

I could use that, just had to wait for the right moment.

Eventually the beam started to peter out, until it faltered for a second, and that's when Luna struck. She'd gathered her power slowly, taking care to keep the Protect stable, preparing a second much stronger blast of kinetic energy. She shaped the blast, a ring the size of the ice flower that had formed in front of her barrier, angled down towards the Seel. It was a magnificent sight, and I'm told it's made it into several highlight reels, from pokeschools to news reports. A superb example of utilizing your opponent's strengths against them, and a sobering reminder that ours was a blood sport. The ice flower exploded into sharp knives ice, propelled at speeds more commonly seen in bullets than shards of ice.

I was honestly surprised at the Seel's toughness, taking many hits like those and still trying to fight, but I have to admit, I may have gone overboard if the pieces of ice sticking out of it and the blood running down turning the water around it red were any indication.

"Seel! No! Return!"

The sight of the seal pokemon bleeding out and Daisy Waterflower's cry of terror and despair were my first exposure to the rawer side of pokebattling. Even Flint's Infernape had been a clean fight. Still, you'd think it wouldn't get to me after k- _after_ , but it was a reminder that for all that a part of me still remembered the games and cartoons this was neither. This wasn't a flock of Zubats I could swat down with little thought to the implications. This was real life now. I wasn't Ash Ketchum traveling the pokeworld having wacky adventures and facing zero real consequences. I was Red. I was the would be Champion. The living legend yet to be who dethroned Blue just after he finished the climb himself. Well, in another life, in another time. No fucking way was my nephew beating me to anything. Just going to ignore how disturbingly well it would correlate to the life of my namesake if he did, and the circumstances that could lead to it. You better not fuck with me on this, destiny.

But then, I suppose I really shouldn't have been surprised this way, not after the tunnel. I was pretty sure the Koffings and Ekans were stains on a cave wall, and-

The battle pretty much ended there, with Daisy running off to get her pokemon to Nurse Joy. Someone who must have been a Gym aide gave me the badge after registering my pokedex into a terminal in a room connected to the pool. This was it for easy fights. Surge was next, and he was a strong fighter, a war vet, somehow, l couldn't handle him carelessly, because even if the power disparity offered me every advantage, he'd have the experienced to capitalize on a mistake. I walked out of the Cerulean Gym with Luna on my shoulders and blood on my mind.

I suppose ambition has a price, and I had a feeling we weren't done paying.

Well, bring it you fuckers, I'll make every single thing that gets in my way bleed and suffer. I was Red and I had a destiny to fulfill, and I was also Azula and that meant _things_ about making things happen.


	19. The Path 5

Walking my way to Vermillion was a Thing. I knew of only two viable routes to the port city that didn't take me through Saffron City, and both were rather circuitous. The first would involve double backing to Pewter and taking the Diglett Cave, coming out at the other end right next to my target. The second would involve the Rock Tunnel down to Lavender Town, down routes 12 and 11 until finally arriving at Vermillion from the same direction as the other route.

I settled for the Rock Tunnel. I wanted a Gengar, and there were few places better than Lavender for getting started on adding one of those to my team. I walked my way through Route 9, a pretty picturesque place full of drops and cliffs. It looked like a place plenty of hikers would visit. I met a girl, older than me by the looks of it, called Alicia who challenged me to a battle. I was happy to oblige her four vs my two since this wasn't the cramped confines of Mt. Moon, and I had this feeling I wouldn't encounter any Rocket scum during this leg of my journey.

"Go Oddish!"

She did this cute throw, spinning on her right foot, while unclipping her pokeball with her left hand, throwing it out at the end of her spin. I asked her how long she'd been practicing that.

"All month!"

I should probably practice something like that, if perhaps less cutesy and more badass. A mental nudge had Luna teleport down from her seat on my shoulders, standing across from our opponents. Alicia opened the fight with a command for Acid, her walking plant spitting a glob of dark liquid at Luna, prompting a Teleport to the side, followed by a quick Psychic. A bunch of the energy behind it bled off into visible light, casting a purple glow that let the Oddish jump out of the way.

That just wouldn't do.

A second Psychic, this one more focused and barely visible rocketed down and smacked the Oddish past its trainer. The Bellsprout that followed, the second Oddish, and the second Bellsprout she sent out had similar fates. Honestly, it kinda felt like I was cheating. By the time I'd made my way through to the Pokemon Center before the Rock Tunnel, not once having had a hit land on Luna after battling seven more trainers, I was a bit saddened. Fighting with Yue was a bit more challenging, but she'd been training with Luna often, and well, that was a fast track to power. Yes, yes, I was doing the going out and conquering thing quite well, and while not quite the lamentations of the men and women of the enemies driven before me, my match record and wallet were looking pretty good, but there was no challenge to it, no excitement. I should let Yue get more of the fights, I guess. And get more pokemon to train up.

Bah.

I'd just have to smack my way to the Conference and maybe there I'd face a worthy opponent.

It was night by the time I went into the Rock Tunnel, having stopped at the Center to refresh Luna, when I realized a small flaw in my travel plan. The tunnel wasn't lighted and going more than a dozen meters into it dropped you into total darkness. This was not ideal. I let my psychic senses slip a little from my grasp, sensing the world around me, the Zubats in their nooks and crannies, the Geodudes sleeping in piles that looked like they were part of the cave, and at the very edge, farther into the cave system, a blob of malice and hunger unlike anything I'd ever felt before. Not quite in the here and now. It was as beautiful as it was horrifying.

I had to know what that was.

So I followed the tunnel, navigating with my mind, passing wild pokemon when I could, blasting them with psychic power when they dared stand before me, senses unerringly trained on the aberration further in. I started feeling a new pokemon at the edges, similar, but lacking the... evil of the one ahead. We got closer and closer and I could tell the moment it noticed our presence. It turned, facing us, a manic energy to its actions, the hunger I'd felt earlier spiking at the prospect of two more meals. This was something else.

"HaUNteEEr." Its voice was a macabre mishmash of many different voices, children, men, women, other pokemon. It dragged shivers down my spine and felt like nails dragging across a chalkboard inside my head. I could feel Luna trembling beside me, disturbed by the miasma of negativity rolling off of the very _wrong_ Haunter before us.

It lunged, hands extended, mouth wide open and filled with entirely too many long and pointy teeth. I threw myself to the left, barely catching Luna when the sudden motion threw her off my shoulder. I threw a hurried blast of psychic energy after it, clipping it but failing to do much damage. It let out a pained screech that reverberated through the tunnel, wincing from the sheer piercing volume this close up.

It whirled around, raising its hands and collecting a ball of negativity between them. Shadow Ball, probably. I closed my eyes, prodding Luna to do the same and to then let loose a Dazzling Gleam. The first one she'd ever done in battle given our propensity for pure psychic attacks. The world went white even through my eyelids, and the screech of agony from the Haunter felt like it would rupture our eardrums. I was glad Yue was in her ball. This was too dangerous for her.

We kept up the assault, flinging psychic attack after psychic attack. It actually managed to dodge most of them, but a few kept slipping through, tearing ragged holes into its gaseous body. Getting angrier and angrier after every hit until it let out a roar and just disappeared, one moment there and the next gone. It would have killed me if I hadn't had my psychic perceptions open. I saw and felt it appear behind me an instant before it actually did, saw as it launched itself at my back and sank its teeth into me, felt the agony as its teeth tore into more than mere flesh, tearing at my very mind and soul, Luna letting out a heart rending cry.

Then it appeared behind and I barely got out of the way, slamming against the wall to my right in an effort to dodge. Luna shot a Psychic at its back, and this time it seemed to finally take it down, leaving a vague gaseous blob on the rocky floor. I was so not letting a pokemon that strong go uncaught, on that basis alone I would have caught this Haunter. The fact that it seemed to come straight out of a grimdark pokemon world and was the murderous monster such a world would produce just made it all the more pressing. Few people could survive an attack by that thing on an open field, much less in a cave environment.

So I threw a Premier Ball at it, because if ever there was a pokemon that shouted for a special pokeball it was this thing. Perhaps I could practice mind fuckery on it? It's not like I could make it worse, and success would mean control over a monster of a ghost pokemon. The ball landed in the amorphous cloud the pokemon had turned into after the last attack, hit the floor and then opened, sucking the cloud of gas in from the inside. It actually looked pretty cool in the dim glow of the purple psychic light emanating from my hands and eyes. It shook once before sealing and confirming my third capture, first one that I wanted to put in my team.

I needed to stop getting in trouble in caves, I really did. I couldn't throw fire around in a cave, and I was starting to miss it.

I picked up the ball and clipped it to the inside of my jacket. That was when I noticed the extra company headed my way. By which I mean the dozen or so other Haunters slowly closing in on me. This was not ideal. They didn't feel outright evil like the one I'd caught, but I was pretty sure I didn't want to be surrounded by ghost pokemon that liked to lick away your life force until you died.

The option of running was taken out of my hands when one of them popped out from a wall and rushed me. It was slower than the other one by a fair margin and got a Psychic to the face, turning it into an amorphous blob of gas while still a couple of feet away from me. More popped out and then it was all Psychics and dodging for a while. It was the last two that got to me.

Luna was blasting one of the last four Haunters on the field, and the other three rushed me at the same time, one of them getting a blast to the face and dropping unconscious, I dodged another one, but the third clamped down on my left arm with teeth significantly less savage than the ones in my new Haunter's mouth. It hurt, but it wasn't only the pain of the teeth sunk into my arm, no I could feel as this thing worried at my very self, perhaps my very soul. Then it started licking and everything went utterly cold. A chunk of the psychic energy I'd gathered for the fight washed away and into the Haunter, causing the glow around me to visibly dim. The Haunter I'd initially managed to dodge turned around and bit around my shoulder, failing to penetrate through the jacket, but nevertheless biting into my soul and licking another chunk of energy away.

Luna let out furious screech, blasting the tunnel with a Dazzling Gleam that put all her previous attacks to shame. The Haunters on me screamed in agony as they were blown away by the powerful fey light, and I screamed in agony from the psychic wounds, the bleeding bite on my arm, and my fried retinas. I felt more than saw the follow up Psychics she sent at them, taking them out of the fight.

I couldn't feel a single living (or unliving) being within the range of my psychic senses, likely having been driven away by the violent energies used during the swarm attack and the previous fight. I let myself collapse to the floor, back to a wall. Perhaps taking this route hadn't been the best of ideas. Haunter licks were supposed to be lethal, and I hadn't studied the subject nearly enough to know whether that was simply a myth. I'd taken two bites, and two licks. Everything hurt, and everything was so cold I couldn't stop shivering. I needed to bandage my arm and get out the other side and to Lavender. If anyone knew how to deal with wounds inflicted by ghosts it was the people of the town renowned for an abundance of ghosts.

This I did know how to do. Our mothers had insisted we learn first aid, and so we'd taken a few classes at the clinic in Pallet. Luna was by my side and rummaging through the messenger bag until she surfaced with the first aid kit. I peeled up the torn sleeve of my jacket, feeling as bits of cloth dragged their way out of the bite. I could only imagine something like that would hurt a lot under any other circumstances. As things stood everything felt mind numbingly cold, except for the bite, which burned like it was on fire. For all that the bite was pretty much along the length of my whole arm. Damned genes. As far as painful things were concerned, bits of torn cloth didn't really register when everything else was so much worse.

Fuck me, I had to wonder about the mortality rate for new trainers, especially the really young ones like myself. I can't imagine the average kid could survive a swarm like that or patch themselves up in the aftermath. I was pretty sure I was on the clock as it was, what with the licks and the sourceless rending pain that I was pretty sure was my soul screaming in agony about the bites taken out of it.

With my dominant arm a bloody mess, my right arm not working correctly at the shoulder, and everything else feeling too numb to really help, Luna ended up patching up my arm pretty much by herself through liberal use of telekinesis. When all was said and done, I stood, if shakily, surrounded by fourteen blobs of Haunter gas, and shivering like it was winter and I was wearing summer wear, and you know, not psychic. Now, what possible use would I have for fourteen Haunters? I was so going to evolve me a Gengar. Or three. Besides, this probably counted as a public service what with how violent they'd been.

I dipped my right hand into the pokeball section of my bag, the whole arm twitching painfully without my input. My aim would suck, but then they weren't moving and I had phenomenal cosmic powers. I threw the balls, guided by my powers, feeling spikes of agony every time I used them, and Luna brought back the first three, after that I simply let the rest of them be automatically transported to father's ranch.

"Ralts," came Luna's voice, tinged with fear and worry. "Ralts, ralts!"

"Yes, we're leaving now, don't worry love. I'll be fine. Come on, climb up."

"Ralts!"

"You're not that heavy sis, but fine if you want to walk I'm not going to force the issue."

We set out, Luna leading this time, since my considerably diminished psychic senses weren't up to the task, guiding us through the Rock Tunnel. After around twenty minutes of walking a voice rang out from the darkness.

"Halt, trainer! I challenge you to a battle. Anyone who can navigate these places in the darkness must be mighty indeed!"

"I'm afraid I'm a tad pressed for time at the moment mister," I was dismayed at how weak my voice sounded, and at how much the shivering was affecting it, and the slurring. I couldn't feel how badly off I was over the cold, but if I was having trouble speaking things had to be pretty bad indeed. "I don't feel like stopping for a battle would be smart."

"What would be more- Mew's balls girl, what happened to you?!"

I felt as he ran up to me, felt as he knelt before me, presumably to get a better look at my condition, felt as he inspected my bandaged arm. I even felt the heat of his headlamp as it shone over me. I did not, however, see a thing. I felt something twist up inside me, fear that Luna might have, in saving my life, blinded me. I knew flash blindness was a thing, but if it was permanent I would have to make sure she never realized what had happened. Somehow. I didn't have high hopes I'd manage that.

"Haunter swarm. Couple bites, couple licks, I should probably get to Lavender soon."

That's when he went from scared and worried to "I'm afraid this girl is going to keel over any second now" scared. He moved, doing something I couldn't distinguish, and then he was bundling me up in a blanket before picking me up, telling Luna to get on, and booking it down the tunnel much faster than I could have managed at my best. This was fine too I suppose. I let go of the tight control I had over my senses, the world's details falling away until all I could perceive were Luna and the man carrying me, my mind slipping away from the here and now and casting about for the futures I always pushed away.

I saw the man taking me to a, no, the only, clinic in Lavender Town, getting me admitted, and hanging around until someone told him I wasn't going to make it and later breaking down crying over a bottle of whiskey. I saw as the on duty nurse set about trying save me after I slipped into unconsciousness and lost the hold over my powers that let me continue on after taking lethal spiritual wounds. I saw as the light inside of me faded and burnt out, I saw my dream unfulfilled, the Indigo Conference a disappointing sham, Lance undefeated, Blue's ambitions and rivalry broken, Ash's innocence dead. I saw my death leaving Mama and Gardemom, and Mom without their daughter, leaving father without his extortion loving princess, but most importantly, leaving sis alone in a strange town, in an often cruel world, I saw time pass and I saw her wither and die without her other half, without me.

That could never be allowed to happen.

And so instead of relaxing and trying to conserve my energy, instead of trusting that everything would be alright and letting go for a bit so I could rest, I pulled at every last scrap of power I could manage. I focused my senses to their fullest, straining to see what it was that had been damaged. It couldn't be a physical problem, technology was such in the pokemon world that if it was of the material it was likely curable, and so my death despite reaching medical attention meant it wasn't a material problem.

So I looked, burning through everything I had in an attempt to fix whatever was wrong. I saw it as I was running out of time, it was a structure of radiant light, beautiful and so very complex, extending from some indescribable realm into the physical, into me. As I beheld the structure I saw imperfections, two big tears where parts had been ripped off, slowly, glacially knitting back together into wholeness, and at the junction that connected it to me, a single, flawed point. The rest of the structure was fluid, full of energy, alive in such a raw manner that it represented the very concept of life itself, but the connector point was cold, sluggish, as if it was dying. I watched as it lost more and more energy, getting colder, deader, and understood. This was the the draining effect of a Haunter's lick.

Slowly, surely, the point connecting my body and soul would die and snap and then they wouldn't be connected anymore. I beheld the deadened connection, saw as life and energy tried to flow into my body and bottlenecked there, letting only a trickle through, and despaired. I didn't have enough strength left to try to revive the connection. I felt like I was tapping into the very last reserves of life, burning myself out just for a second longer of observation. I had discovered how to save myself, and in doing so lost the ability to even attempt to do so.

The world away from the beautiful structure began to fade, sound, sight, smell, everything, until all that was left the tiny life above my body, crying in distress as she felt her lifelong companion fade away from her senses. I couldn't give up. I couldn't leave her alone in this cruel world. That final second stretched on, seemingly eternal as I cast about trying to find a solution to death. What possible chance did I have of finding an answer? I was ten, a particularly well lived ten, seasoned with the life experiences of a past life, and with a particularly strong psionic gift, but still ten. Even my past life had only managed late twenties before dying.

I looked, trying to find the point where my last life had been severed, curious and perhaps trying to make one second stretch into two eternities. I saw then a small divide, a point where a much larger structure had merged with a much smaller one, only to have the much more malleable smaller structure adapt and integrate the two into one. It was utterly fascinating, and up until the malleability sank in, utterly useless. When it did though, that was when I took whatever remained of that last second and threw it at the structure, WILLING it to flow, to move, to reach around the connecting point and into the world, anchoring my soul to my body below and past the dying point, bypassing it entirely.

For a second, it felt like the connection didn't take, the world beyond the structure fading entirely, all the life previously trying to flow out stagnating, before a spark of life traveled from the world to the structure, shocking the whole system into motion and solidifying the connection. Luna. My beautiful Luna, I would recognize her life anywhere. As my awareness drifted back into my body, I couldn't help thinking that I looked dead, that I felt mostly dead, and that slowly but surely life was flowing back into me, my still body starting to shiver again. The last thing I saw before giving into unconsciousness was the man carrying me hugging me closer to himself, tears running down his cheeks, and Luna breaking down in tears of joy hugging me for all her tiny body was worth.

Thank you Big Small Sis, I wasn't ready to be done yet. We're not done yet. This was just a little bit more blood paid at the altar of ambition, a little bit more blood spilled on the road to power. At this rate everything was going to be stained a bloody red.


	20. The Path 6

I felt Luna in the distance, my sister's life burning bright, a single star in an empty void. Linked to me, bound to her, two souls made one. I felt something else as well, farther in the distance of the dark void, an absence of being, starker even than the void around me. I could tell I wasn't dead, I couldn't be if Luna was alive. Our bond had been strong before, but now… Heh. One day we'd be utterly unstoppable, I knew this in the depths of my being. It was just a matter of getting to that day. That was fine, we'd fight anyone worthy and it would simply be a stepping stone to that destiny of power. The rest we would simply reap for all they could give, what little they had, and take it for ourselves.

The void around started fading and I could feel myself moving closer and closer to my sister, to reality. The thing in the distance was still there, all voidlike and such, and when I finally reached reality, it noticed. I felt it the moment I came to its attention, and very dearly wished I hadn't, because what I felt next was interest. I did not know what the fuck that thing was, but I wanted nothing to do with it yet. It was wrong. Hopefully it'd take its time and by the time it got to me we'd be ready to smack down whatever the fuck that thing was. Then we'd catch it, because what kind of bloodthirsty blood knighting trainer crazy would I be if I didn't?

Awareness slipped away from me and then it was just indistinct dreams and nightmares. Two faces, endlessly asking why, the sound of dripping blood in the background, its distinct coppery smell cloying and all pervading.

And really, what a stupid question. The answer was simple, their lives hadn't been worth Luna's. Their friends' lives weren't worth Luna's. Their families' life weren't worth Luna's. Everyone's lives weren't worth Luna's. I'd slit all their throats again and again for eternity if that's what it took to keep her safe. I would do anything, and if the world burned for it, then so be it.

I awoke to pain. The worst I'd ever felt. Like I was missing pieces of myself, gaping, open wounds. Luna had already been by my side, but now she was actively communicating with me. Telling me everything I'd missed while I was not quite dead, or as she informed me, actually dead a couple times for a bit, and the shitstorm I'd unintentionally caused by being alive. I'd been in the Lavender Clinic for a week. I'd pretty much stabilized within a few hours of the Hiker, because come on, that's what the guy would have totally been in the games, getting me here, being clinically dead for a few moments here and there until I just sort of started getting better.

Cue one week of getting better and I only mostly looked like death. Progress. Problem was, now I had to get the fuck out of town quick. Apparently medical marvels get all sort of attention from all sort of places that I didn't want anywhere near me. Mostly, it was the League official sent to investigate claims of a Haunter swarm survivor and later assess the safety of the Rock Tunnel in light of a violent swarm of Haunters being there to attack someone.

Now normally one would wonder why I was in such a hurry to get the fuck out of here just because I had attracted so much attention, and to be perfectly honest it was less that and more that an incident such as this required that my legal guardians be informed, and I had no desire to have any of my mothers ever know this happened at all, because it could be that they could get the silly idea in their heads to pull permissions that ought not be pulled vis-a-vis my trainer license because they worried about me. I'd paid in blood for it already, mine and others', I couldn't let my mothers get in the way of that, especially not this early. I wasn't letting anyone render it all meaningless, for any reason.

There was also the possibility of an investigation into my viability as an Early Start Trainer from an incident like this one, given the circumstances of how it'd started, and the fact that I'd taken down literally all of the Haunter with me, captured them, and survived, I was pretty sure I could get off on that front. I doubt there were more than a handful of trainers alive who could have managed any of that, much less all of it, but I would still prefer not to have to bother with all of that.

Luna had been keeping an eye on the doctors here, making sure they had my best interests, and in so doing had gleaned that I was healthy enough to leave, but that they wouldn't let me if I tried. A combination of needing to talk to my parents, and the League sending a carefully worded message about wanting to speak with me, and wouldn't it be better if I were to still be there when the investigator got here, besides, they needed me to be healthy and this way two birds.

Fuck that. They obviously couldn't do shit about the metaphysical wounds or they'd have already done so, not to mention the half remembered future where I died, they'd fixed what they could and I wasn't staying a second longer than I needed.

Luna got my things and I got ready in the room's bathroom. Maybe it was just me, but it seemed like I was paler than before, which was saying something. I turned the shower's water to damned hot because I was fucking freezing and studied the half healed bite all over my left arm. It was… ghastly, no pun. It's a good thing my jacket has long sleeves. And that I have a spare, since the original was a bloody mess. Those were going to be some bitching scars. I could even tell where the lick went from the odd very dark fading bruise around my elbow. My right shoulder and the area around it were a huge fucking bruise, with the lick bruise on top of it.

I was shaking, not because of the cold. Why was I shaking? Luna was hugging me. How was she hugging me? Oh I was on the shower floor. She entered my mind, doing her best to push down the sudden fucking freakout over my very near death, bleeding off as much of the tide of emotions as she could, holding my mind together and in as stable a position as possible until it passed. I finished up and got dressed, taking my pokedex and used pokeballs from Luna, who'd hidden them the second she heard the doctors and nurses talking about identifying me. They couldn't connect my ID to me if they couldn't access my ID. They could also not link me to my ID by checking who my pokeballs were registered to if they couldn't access my pokeballs.

Escaping a clinic that has been taking care of your unconscious body for a week is, as it turns out, rather easy. After all, why would they think that the ten year old girl who just survived injuries previously considered a death sentence, having received said injuries in a deadly pokemon attack would sneak out of said clinic? Honestly, if I were anyone else I'd probably be really quite traumatized at this point, properly terrified of setting foot outside. Well, more traumatized, I couldn't pretend I had come out unscathed from that mess. I wasn't quite that delusional yet.

Ghost pokemon had always fascinated me, they were literal, actual ghosts. Their power was a direct counter to my own, and they could do all sort of neat things that were just plain weird. Seriously, Gengar were supposedly capable of dimension shenanigans, that alone made them supremely interesting. Then you added in creatures like Banettes and Drifblim and you had yourself a type filled with oddballs and monsters. Now that fascination was tempered by a very healthy respect for their sheer deadliness. The Gengar line were a specially deadly example of ghosts to be fair, but they were generally representative of the type's danger levels.

But hey, at least they the clinic had taken good care of me, yeah?

They had my face, but father had classified my files at some pretty ridiculous rank before I'd even set out on my journey. People without access could see my trainer name and nothing else. Some rando league official sent out to Lavender was so not going to have the proper access to match my face with licenses within my age range. No one knew I was his daughter, but there were rumors ever since we'd popped up in Pallet, living at his compound. Given his fame and importance he felt the rumors alone put me in some degree of danger and thus some precautions were necessary to mitigate said danger. He'd done the same for Gary's files. He couldn't protect us out in the world the way he and my mothers could in Pallet and Viridian, but he tried his best anyway.

Then Luna had simply teleported us to the other side of the window and we were walking away. Well, we were walking away after the pain the Teleport had caused faded. The map in my poketch gave me a direction to walk to and I was gone, walking towards route 12, morning sun high in the sky. Weak as I was I didn't make as much progress as I would otherwise have, that is to say I wouldn't make Vermillion in two days, but three or four was more than acceptable. By nightfall I'd reached the Silence Bridge and decided to camp out along the cliff face left of the road.

Training the rabid Haunter was going to be difficult, but I was so not going to pass up on a pokemon that was so clearly head and shoulders above the rest of its kind. That thing had been massive and massively strong. I could use the overwhelming power it would bring when it was fully evolved and trained. Perhaps even keep a couple of the other Haunter too, never can have too many powerful monsters capable of hiding in your shadow. Or the shadows of people you need dealt with. We would have had the kind of strength to bully it into discipline, what with Luna and I being Luna and I, but every single time I tried to use my powers ended in pain.

Perhaps we could use this as a test case for mind fuckery? But no, Yue couldn't hold it in place, she wasn't strong enough yet to safely contain that beast while Luna messed around and turned it into a loyal guardian. Still, that seemed like the best option, I wouldn't trust simple training to hold something like that for long before it slipped its leash. Yes, as soon as we could, we were going to remodel its head, then it'd simply be a matter of training it and feeding it the other Haunter until it evolved.

The splitting headache I got when I levitated the pokeball in question to my hand convinced me that yes, leaving the training for when I was fully recovered was for the best. I put the ball back on my belt and crawled into my sleeping bag with Luna and Yue, savoring the warmth of their bodies against mine. I was still so cold. At first I'd thought it was the clinic being weird about their air conditioning, then when I was out and about in what should have been summer heat and still cold I'd thought it was a matter of time before I warmed up. When I was still cold hours later, I became concerned.

Normally I'd use the psychic temperature control we'd gotten so good at over the years, but I was frankly exhausted and given the rather adverse reaction I'd had to minor psychic cantrips, it felt like trying the comparatively much more complex and power intensive skill would have probably been very bad.

I let my power and senses free from the bindings I kept them in, feeling a slight pain just from that, felt all the pokemon around me, a couple humans down the Silence Bridge, and then saw the future as my Sight blinked open. A man frantically searching Lavender with an officer Jenny. Ash fighting Misty and tying despite Pikachu's type advantage, Misty deciding the fight was deserving of granting the Cascade Badge. Mother, Ashley, and Gardemom doing… no, I tore my gaze away. Gary fighting a string of trainers all the way down to Vermillion where he then ripped through Lt. Surge in a tough but decisive battle.

Well. Now I really had to make sure I was okay so I could double time it to Vermillion. Wouldn't do to have my nephew surpass me in anything. Nevermind that Gary was older by a couple months.

I turned my senses inwards, trying to find that connection between the material world and wherever the fuck that structure of lights had been. I searched for what felt like hours, but a quick look told me was it was only half of one and the pain was getting worse. I had seen nothing of the lights of my souls, nothing of the connection that linked me to the world. I needed rest. Both in the physical and spiritual sense. It was clear my gift was strained beyond what was healthy, and using it more than necessary couldn't be good. Not to mention that what little we'd managed to walk had been exhausting and there was still a long bridge ahead of us.

Seriously, a fucking 50 kilometer bridge only traversable on foot, or bike if brave and skilled enough? Who the fuck thought that was a good idea? And that was only up to the exit for Vermillion!

We made good time out of the bridge, challenging all the trainers we faced along the way, and stepping foot in the Route 11 Gate near the end of the second day. There was some unpleasantness that left me with a blinding migraine from the guard recognizing me as "the Missing Lavender Patient" and having to strain to mess with his memory and perceptions while Luna held him. Good thing the place had a rest area with beds and facilities. I choked down some pain pills from the Gate's Infirmary and laid down to sleep, contemplating the craziness of the world, a delicious feeling settling in me, until consciousness faded.

Seriously, who could have known surviving the unsurvivable and then pulling a disappearing act would make me so famous? I'd seen forum threads about me in the guard's mind. Fortunately all they had were rough sketches of me and nothing more. Let's hope no one thought of pairing a Smeargle and a powerful psychic to extract my likeness from the heads of the people who saw me.


	21. The Path 7

The morning saw me popping more pain pills to deal with the remnants of the migraine, bites, and general literal soul rending pain, and any ideas about trying to dive into the mysteries of my soul were quickly squashed by a feeling that even trying would end badly. The constant cold and shivering that had been with me since waking up in the clinic was more than a little irritating, damn near tortuous really, but the pain pills felt nice, so there was that at least.

A quick check through the Gate's guest accommodations failed to turn up any extra clothing I could throw on to mitigate the obviously paranormal cold. Eh, they probably wouldn't help, the hot water from the shower barely did anything. Luna and Yue seemed to be the only ones who helped.

So we ventured forth to Route 11 after a nice breakfast of MREs from the Gate and more pain pills. Luna being particularly careful in keeping an eye on the guard on our way out. A repeat of last night would not be possible and I really needed her on the lookout, because everything was a fluffy cloud, with pain, and cold, but hey, something. I tried my best to make good time so I could get to a nice bed and sleep more, going so far as to decline most challenges, only pausing long enough to stomp two specially pushy idiots with Yue who wouldn't take no for an answer.

It wasn't until I was standing near where the entrance to the Diglett Tunnel was supposed to be, really nothing more than a cave set into a cliff face on one side of a small canyon, that I realized a problem with my plan to avoid the more traditional route to Vermillion City. There was a fucking ginormous Snorlax blocking the canyon and the only alternative would be to climb up around it, something for which I was not trained, nor had the equipment to safely attempt. Shit.

I'd forgotten this was a possibility.

I… we could try teleporting to the other side, but I was loathe to risk a blind attempt on a good day, much less right now when my gift was so very frayed. Even with Luna doing the teleporting I didn't want to risk exposure to such a strong psychic phenomenon again since my gift was clearly worse of than when we left the clinic. I could feel my soul was damaged, and teleportation did weird things I didn't want anywhere near any metaphysical open wounds. Again.

If we went by game rules, which its presence would suggest, it would be a relatively low level specimen. Problem was that level didn't necessarily mean the same it did in the games, and Snorlax were walking natural disaster candidates if ever there was one. Luna was a great example of this, she was an absolute beast of a fighter, with power befitting more of her evolved forms despite her unevolved status and being at a level of development that would not have allowed for similar power in the games. She was overdue for evolution, but even so, no Ralts similarly overdue would be capable of comparable feats of power as she could perform.

In the end, it was a risk we were both willing to take. We were both confident in her abilities, and in all likelihood this Snorlax was the same level 30 Snorlax encountered in the games. To quote every moment of similar bad decisions: "Meh, we can take it." So Luna focused her power, every little bit of it, building up the biggest punch she'd ever thrown. She spent a few minutes doing this given the rather unhurried nature of the situation, since it was asleep and fair was for idiots, before unleashing a blast kinetic energy that tinted purple at the edges from waste power. It traversed the fifteen meters between them in the blink of an eye and struck its belly with what seemed like the force of a goddamned naval artillery shell.

It was, I thought, an extremely impressive attack, but definitely not one that I wanted to ever repeat while standing so close to the target. I felt like I'd been hit by a moving wall, and the back of my head hurt from where I'd hit it against the ground when the shock wave knocked me down. I could feel Luna at the edge of my awareness somewhere behind me, and she seemed to be in better shape than me because there was less pain coming from her than from me. Yay for pokemon resilience.

I propped myself up, and beheld one of the most beautiful things I'd seen in either life. It brought a smile to my face that would have likely worried my parents to witness. The Snorlax had been shoved backwards something like fifteen meters, and the walls of the canyon near its former position were broken and cracked. Not an artillery shell then, given I was still alive and Luna hadn't caused a bigger landslide, but it was still fucking magnificent.

Then the Snorlax got up and looked very pissed. Also very hurt, given the blood it coughed up, but still very pissed. I was already on my feet before it started charging a Hyper Beam, and mostly out of the blast radius when it fired, so the shock wave only threw me down to the ground instead of killing me or breaking me. Luna, having been the target and not silly at all had stood still only long enough to draw its fire, then teleported away once the beam was out of its mouth.

I couldn't help the involuntary telepathic thought I sent Luna, telling her to retaliate, to knock it out and win the fight, it had been such an integral part of our fighting style for so long that it was instinct now. It was an unparalleled advantage than only other psychics could match or understand, but right now all it did now was send a spike of agony through my head and make me eat dirt. But it galvanized Luna, I could tell through the pain as she started barraging the Snorlax with Psychics. I recovered in time to see the last few that hit before it fell down and didn't get back up.

I called out to Luna, throwing her a pokeball that barely made it halfway to her before she seized control with telekinesis and redirected it at the Snorlax. Waste not want not and all that. Now I think I'm going to lay down on the ground for a while until my head wasn't splitting open anymore. A minute later I felt Luna cuddle up to me, running one of her tiny arms through my hair. As the migraine continued a fear I'd been ignoring began to run through me. It was obvious I wasn't going to be able to hold off from accidentally using my gift long enough for it to heal, and it seemed to be getting worse and worse every time I did. Leaving aside the deleterious effects on my health it was likely having, which I was more than willing to accept for the privilege of phenomenal cosmic power, if it was like damage to the body where continuous use of injured body parts led to permanently damaged or crippled body parts…

"I'm scared Luna," I said, voice trembling in a way it hadn't done so before in this life.

"Ralts," came her reply, loaded with so much emotion that for a second I thought she'd sent her thoughts into my mind. But no, it was just plain old understanding and intimacy. I couldn't hold back the tears any longer. I hugged her to me and cried, scared and in agony, but most of all glad to have someone so close to me, who I loved and loved me back utterly and unconditionally. I don't know how long I cried, but eventually the urge subsided and the killer migraine downgraded to just a migraine.

"Luna, I think I need you to use Imprison on me. We're both psychics, it should seal all of my gift away."

"Ralts!" This time her response was alarmed.

"You have to. I'm not healing, Luna. Hell, I'm getting worse, I barely did anything this time and it was worse than the Gate Guard."

"Ralts," she said, her tone sad. She climbed up on me and put her arms around my head, then with a flash of light felt her power enter me and then nothing.

I could feel nothing beyond me. I couldn't feel the world around me. I couldn't feel the life around me. I couldn't feel Luna. I couldn't feel Luna. I couldn't feel Luna. I couldn't feel Luna I couldn't feel Luna I couldn't feel Luna I couldn't feel Luna I couldn't feel Luna.

Luna was shaking me. Luna was there. I hugged her to me, basking in the warmth of her presence and assuring myself that she was there.

"I'm sorry. That was… unpleasant."

The look she gave me was a very clear "No shit."

I'd had my psychic powers for so long that I couldn't remember ever not having access to them. Hell, given their sheer strength it was very possible that there actually wasn't a time I didn't have some level of access to them. I felt like I was missing most of my senses, half my brain, an arm, and a leg. It was even worse than the dampening field from my eight birthday. I guess Imprison could be seen as a cast to immobilize the broken bones of my phenomenal cosmic power while they healed.

Upon closer inspection I could actually feel the seal Luna had placed over my gift, I could feel the edges, and a tiny effort of will saw my power pushing against it, followed by intense pain. I winced. Okay then, no using my power to press against the potentially life saving… thing.

I hugged her to me and we walked the rest of the way to Vermillion with her in my arms. I needed to feel her presence, to reassure myself that she still existed. This would complicate things for the Thunder Badge challenge. No combat precognition, no telepathic communication, possibly no chance to break a team of Haunters through mind fuckery, or try to assume direct control of the super Haunter, much less try to force evolve it into a Gengar.

Luna was strong, well past Gardevoir strong, but Surge had a reputation as a fierce fighter, and the ease with which I'd defeated Brock and Daisy could get him to take me seriously if he'd kept abreast of incoming challengers. Let's hope not. Maybe a few of the captured Haunters would be cooperative without me having to whammy them?

I got to the Vermillion Pokemon Center not long after nightfall, and I could barely keep standing. My head still felt like it was splitting open, and something that I was pretty sure was my soul hurt like a chunk had been ripped off. Which was apt, because, you know, it had. I popped a pill for good measure. I needed my rest, this way I'd be more likely to get it. So I checked in, got Luna and Yue a quick diagnostic with Nurse Joy who said they were in good health and also extremely well developed, and then crashed on the comfy bed that came with the room.


	22. The Path 8

I slept for a whole day and change. It's utterly weird to skip a whole day. First the confusion over what day it is and then the utter incredulity at somehow sleeping for so long. The hunger and dehydration don't help, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel better even through all the discomfort. The migraine I'd been enduring since waking up in Lavender Town and aggravated while getting here had faded to a low key dull headache. Also, and I couldn't be sure about this one because what was I even feeling, my soul was definitely feeling less like a chew toy.

I kept the Imprison seal on anyway. I had no idea how healed I was beyond "to some degree" and I didn't want to relapse by using my gift on instinct again. The longer it had to heal, the better the chances were that I'd be able to use it during the gym challenge, even if only a little. Luna would have to act as crowd control for the Haunter testing. A quick visit to the closest Pokemon transfer machine had it connected to the Oak Ranch Storage Network and I set about assembling the four biggest of the lot for evaluation.

And evaluated them we did. We found a spot to the north of the city, just off the route that came down from Cerulean through the underground. Toughness, speed, and power, all the things a successful Gengar needs. Honestly, I was tempted to call it off after the first two. They weren't up to the standards of the psycho Haunter, but they were exemplars of the species, and the other two weren't anywhere near as impressive. It seemed they were also already somewhat conditioned to bowing before superior power, and it only took a show of force from Luna to get them following orders.

I'd been training the Haunters for a few hours, sitting on a rock while teaching them how to respond to certain attacks, how to best exploit weaknesses, and working on Shadow Ball, when my right shoulder, still raw from the Haunter bite, turned into a burning mass of pain and suffering. I swung at the source, a scream of my pain ripping itself out of me, and Luna was awake and flinging a Psychic at the source of the pain in an instant. We were rewarded by a grunt of pain and the thump of a something hitting the ground.

I did my best to curl up and cover my shoulder without aggravating my also still wounded left arm. For just a moment I'd felt like a hot brand had touched my skin, and it had burned deep. I could feel it even now doing something to my soul that I couldn't quite feel or understand. Luna didn't follow up on whatever had touched me though, even though I could tell just by looking at her that she really wanted to. Well, if I'm being honest, she looked like she wanted to do more than just "follow up", really, something more akin to ready to commit bloody savage murder upon whatever that had been, but was holding back. Barely.

I looked, and saw Gary. And had absolutely no idea why that had hurt as much as it did. Yes, my shoulder was pretty raw from the bite, but that had been more than physical. Gary had alway had a strong destiny, he was full of life, maybe contact from that on the wounds on my soul had been like pouring rubbing alcohol on an open wound? I did my best to pick myself up from the floor, since apparently I'd falled from my rock, and tried to keep the horrible agony from showing too much. Poor kid was probably scared shitless.

"What the hell Red, what happened?" I'd never before heard concern in my nephew's voice, and I found that I did not like how it sounded at all. He shouldn't have to be seriously concerned about anything, much less about me. I was Red, I was Azula. He should be kicking ass and taking names while trying and failing to catch up to me. "Are you okay?"

I could hear quite clearly he did not think I was okay and my answer wasn't going to make a difference on that. So I ignored that and gave him a simple, "Got swarmed in the Rock Tunnel."

"Wait, what the fuck?!" He'd picked up my favorite word quite well. I was so proud. Father was less amused, same for his sister, my niece, whom I rarely saw. "That was you?!"

The look in his eyes was a mixture of utter terror for my life, worry, awe, and insecurity.

"Fucking gossip mongers. I fucking swear. How'd you even find out?" The pain was receding slowly back down to previous levels, but I was still not in the mood for the bullshit that was the world. Didn't help that ever since waking up at Lavender I seemed to have lost all sense of balance and coordination. Fucking kept stumbling and generally being clumsy as fuck.

"Hate to break it to you, but after your disappearing act there's been a bulletin out at all Pokemon Centers, Police Precincts, Citizen Service Centers, basically anywhere official, looking for information about you or your whereabouts. There's conspiracy theories everywhere. Some people are saying you survived Haunter licks."

"Ugh."

"So, that's where you caught those two?" He said, pointing at the Haunters that had, in absence of Luna's and my attention had turned to one annoying the hell out of the other one, which seemed to be humoring it for the sake of not hurting its feelings. If those two were females, I had the perfect names for them.

"And eleven others." Heh. Much as it seemed I'd grown to care for the little fuck seeing him go that pale was _fun_. "Those two were the second and third strongest and biggest of the lot. Probably the ones who got me to be honest, but I can't be sure. Everything hurt and the fucking Tunnel was so damn cold."

"Why not train the strongest one?"

"It a danger to anything and anyone around it."

Well, what do you know, he could go even paler.

"I'm waiting until I'm better before I break it." The pain seemed to make the balance issues worse, and I'd been low key trying to get up and failing, I finally just gave up, extended my right hand towards him, and asked for help. "Hey, Gary, give us a hand up, yeah? I'm still not 100%."

He looked at my hand like it might bite him, before asking "Are you sure I should touch you? It sounded like you got too close to a Magmar when I put my hand on you."

"Yeah, don't worry, was more of a matter of where you put your hand."

He gingerly touched my hand, expecting me to start howling in agony again and to get hit by another Psychic. I merely raised a condescending eyebrow at him, prompting him to pull me up. I recalled my Haunters, and Luna situated herself in her usual spot in my jacket. "Come on nephew, escort your aunt to the Pokemon Center."

He rolled his eyes at me, but kept his usual commentary to himself. I appreciated that, I wasn't up for banter. I was leaning heavily on him. Pain has a way of wearing you out. I considered the bottles of painkillers in my bag and decided that I definitely needed me some of that right about now. I held one out for Luna to open, since I had one hand on Gary keeping myself up. I took one pill and by the time we got to the Pokemon Center everything was nice and warm and cozy. I mean, not quite, because that damnable cold was still there, and the soul pain didn't seem to care about things like painkillers, but I still felt pretty great.

"You challenging Surge tomorrow Gary?"

"What, you crazy? No way. I'm taking a day to study him and get ready before taking that guy on."

"Ah."

"You better not try either, not with the way you are right now."

"Thanks for caring nephew. Come on, I need to get my pokemon checked out and then sleep all day."

A quick checkup later, whereupon I was informed that my Haunter were both female, and we were by my room door.

"Hey, Gary?"

"Yeah 'Zula?" Twitch. I'd gotten used to Red again.

"Don't tell my mothers, or father, okay? I don't want them to worry. I'm going to be perfectly okay," A complete lie, didn't even need my psychic powers to feel that, but Gary bought it, "They worry enough about me already, and I survived, so the danger's past." Probably more lies. Let's just try very hard not to think about lasting permanent damage, and things like that.

"Yeah, okay 'Zula." Twitch. He went in for a hug but the moment he got close to my left arm and right shoulder they started burning, and I couldn't help the hiss of pain the came out of me, and he pulled back like he'd burned me. Which he kinda had. "Get better soon, okay?"

He left back to the lobby and I sank into the bed with Luna and Yue in a ball of delicious feelings and the warmth of my sister and pokemon companion. The cold wasn't so bad with them there.


	23. The Path 9

I awoke to someone pounding on my door. It was not ideal, because every knock made my headache spike. My pain woke Luna, and she was not happy. Yue was oblivious and continued to sleep like nothing was happening. Lucky bitch.

"Come on 'Zula, open up, I'm getting worried."

Gary. Oak.

Couldn't even really be mad at him because the little bastard was actually worried. I could hear it in his voice. Ugh. I nudged Luna, and she pouted at me. I nudged her again and she pouted harder. I pouted back. She opened the door with telekinesis.

"Wha- 'Zula?" Your confusion nourishes me.

"Shut up and get in or go away. Actually, no, shut up, go away, get food, and come back." Apparently pain causes me to get bitchy, who knew? Judging by the sudden doubt in Gary's face at the idea of getting any closer to me, I was a touch intimidating. "No knocking."

"Uh, yeah okay. Sure 'Zula." And away he went, to fetch food.

"See?" I said to Luna, smug. "He has his uses."

"Ralts." She expressed her doubts.

"Look, he'd already waken us up, we might as well get something out of it."

She agreed. Reluctantly. In her eyes, it wasn't enough restitution. I happened to agree, but food was food.

"Come on, help me get dressed please."

By the time Gary came back with the food I was less… testy. I was still pretty irritated by the fucking cold that fucking wouldn't go away, the fucking newfound clumsiness that fucking wouldn't go away, the surprisingly moderately less agonizing soul pain (progress!), and what I could feel was less pain coming from behind the Imprison seal (more progress!). Fucking Haunter. I was tempted to rend their souls and eat them, I don't know if it'd help, or how I'd go about doing it, but it would certainly make me feel better and I was willing to give it the good old college try. Cunts.

Gary, sensing our moods, wisely kept very quiet. Good boy. Yue was less bothered and just ate her food and frolicked about the room. Good girl. I finished my meal after a while and turned my attention upon my nephew. I could literally see him tense up. Delicious.

"Now, what was so important that you needed to wake me up so fucking early?"

"It's eleven thirty." Huh. I checked my poketch. So it was.

"Still too early."

"What the hell happened to you Red?!" His worry had galvanized and overpowered his fear and now he was trying hard to get answers. So sweet of him. "Back in Pallet you were unstoppable, you trained from sunup to well past sundown. You woke up at like six in the morning! You broke the Pallet record for defeating Brock by two weeks, I checked, not to mention what I heard about how you beat him. I saw what you did at the Cerulean Gym too, another speed record by the way, then you drop off the face of the planet for a week and the next thing I know you're, you're this!" He punctuated his rant by gesturing at me at the end.

To be fair, he had a point, I'd seen myself in the mirror, and I could barely summon the energy to eat, much less do other things, but he also didn't have the whole story. For all I knew he had none of the story. He knew I was hurt, somehow, but as I wasn't in a hospital or clinic, nor visibly injured, since the jacket covered everything, he probably thought it was something minor. The headache wasn't helping any, either.

"Luna?"

She floated one of the pain pills my way. I had no idea what the fuck they were, but I'd stopped caring after the first one. They didn't fix everything, but they fixed enough. Well, helped enough. Fix was probably too strong a word.

"What do you think happened?" I focused on him, saw him pull back at the serious tone.

"I don't know. It's been kept pretty quiet, but there's rumors from Haunter swarm to an Onix nest collapsing the tunnels. Since you say you have a bunch of Haunters, I guess something about that."

I couldn't help the snort at the Onix one. Fuck no. I debated what to say, before settling for taking off the jacket. I stood up, my legs a little wobbly, and showed him my wounds. For as serious as all of this was, I still couldn't help the amusement at how pale he went. My arm didn't look much better than the first time I'd looked at it. Big red scars from where the teeth had gone in, and the damned bruise from the lick that seemed to be fading glacially slowly. The faded bruise on my shoulder looked pretty nasty, but was less prominent now, with the lick bruise in the middle of it.

"It's really quite simple. I died. Then I got better. A few times, apparently. Was in a coma for a week. You know what those bruises are too, at least you should if you paid more attention than me to the possible dangers of ghost pokemon."

"H-how...?"

"Fuck you, that's how." Pure fucking luck is how, but no one would ever know that. Let people build on the legend of Red. "Suffice to say I'm still here and just need some time to get back to full ass kicking capacity."

He sat down on my bed, visibly rattled. I put my jacket back on with Luna's help, "We chose a life full of wonders, of miracles, but also a life of constant danger. Sometimes we get lucky and all we see is the good side, and sometimes not so much. I hope you never see the ugly side Gary. I better not hear anything from our family, even in light of what I've shown and told you just now."

I looked him in the eyes, putting forth the full strength of my being behind a glare. Sealed I may have been, but I was still Red Azula. "Understood?"

I didn't stay to see the results. I had decided on a plan for Surge. I was getting in my own head, psyching myself out. In the end, there was little he could do before Luna's full power, and she didn't need me to help her fight. She wasn't as good as me at the fire thing, unfortunately, but I suspected I was the only reason she could do it all, so I'd take what I could. If Surge brought out a metal type she could melt it into a puddle, and if he didn't she was strong enough to plow through his team. We'd soften him up with the Haunters, henceforth named Ty Lee and Mai, and Yue, then hammer whatever was left with Luna.

I walked out and left Gary in the room. He probably needed some time to think. I hoped his dream wouldn't die with this revelation. In the anime he'd given up on becoming Champion, gone the Pokemon Professor route, and as far as I knew never amounted to anything. It'd be a waste. At least now he was also Blue, and Blue had achieved greatness. All that remained was to see which side won out. I wasn't sure how long I'd remain Champion here, there was more conquering to be had, maybe I could collect Champion titles and give others a try at the Kanto spot while I was away.


	24. The Path 10

The walk to the Gym was surprisingly exhausting, but that was okay, the pills were good. Maybe that's why it was so exhausting? Combination of healing so many things and metabolizing whatever it was that I was taking. Had to be the good stuff, given the effects. Problems for later, I suppose. I was wobbly and breathing hard by the time I got through the doors. Good days and bad days I guess. Yesterday had been easier, I think, it was a bit of a blur of warm fuzzies from the pills and discomfort from the fucking everything else, so I couldn't be sure.

The inside was really quite suitably dramatic. Dark and foreboding. Wasn't expecting that to be honest, thought it'd be more Vegas less Poe. There were two Gym Aides just inside too, so that made things easier.

"'Sup bitches," Hm, bit slurred, can't have that messing with my image. I cleared my throat, "I'm here to smack around your boss."

The looks on their faces. Ah, wish I'd brought a camera. Doubly so when who I could only assume was Surge started laughing his ass off from the shadows behind them. They had to have set this up, no way were they were just waiting in the dark for the next challenger. I hadn't seen any cameras on the way in, but I hadn't really looked either, could be that I simply missed them.

He walked up to them and fucking damn the guy was fucking huge, what the fuck. Like, I get it, I'm short and tiny even for my age, but what. He must have been like twice my meagre 4'3". Dude must have been an actual fucking giant.

"You've got spunk, short stuff." He knelt down in front me and looked me up and down. "And spirit, but I've seen that look you have about you right now kid. Drugged to the gills, maybe enjoying the buzz a bit too much, and yet still feeling the pain. You should be in the hospital, not challenging me."

"Bah, if the hospital could help, I'd still be there. You think I could walk out without discharge papers getting signed and shit?" I gave him my best smile. The one that made Gary seriously want to punch me in my smug face, gave father shivers, and my mothers headaches. "Besides, I need a handicap to really feel the challenge, you know? Wouldn't want to stomp you too hard, too easily."

"Oh, no you don't kid." I could tell the smile was working super well, but Surge was trying to rein in his pride. Dude was legitimately worried about me! Aw, he was a big softie. Emphasis on big. "You're good, but seriously, go home."

"Greater beings than you have tried to stop me before, Surge." Mostly my mothers, but he didn't need to know that. I stopped trying and just gave him what most people had dubbed my "creepy horror movie kid" face, which was really just my normal face. "Fight me now, or I'll start fighting you and see how long it takes you to get a pokemon out."

I felt bad about this, especially since he was trying to be so nice, but I wasn't feeling well and I wasn't waiting a second longer. I needed to move forwards, to do more, to defeat the strongest. Surge wasn't going to stand in the way of that, no matter how good a guy he was. He got how serious I was then.

"Very well then." I could see the soldier behind his eyes now, instead of the Gym Leader.

The arena was a simple dirt affair, well lighted, and spartan. We stood across from each other. One of the aides registered my Pokedex and the system sprang to life, a computerized voice announcing my challenge.

"Pokemon Trainer Red challenges Gym Leader Lt. Surge for the Thunder Badge. The match will be fought with three pokemon, no substitutions allowed."

"Go, Electrode."

"Yue."

"Begin."

"Confuse Ray." Yue was far from being the bullshit tier staller that she'd be when she grew up, but she was well on her way. "Then Double Team."

"Thunderbolt." Contrary to what the anime liked to show, lightning couldn't be dodged, thankfully, Yue didn't have to, because that Confuse Ray had worked, and the Thunderbolt went wide. I woke Luna up in my jacket, just in case we needed her to be awake and keep us from getting fried by a stray electric attack.

Yue knew the kind of battle style we were building for her well enough by now, and she was making more and more illusory clones and throwing in the occasional Confuse Ray to make sure the Electrode didn't get a fair fight.

"Damn you, kid." Luna felt it the moment he decided on his next move. Surprise and respect. Well. "Explosion." Fuck. Yeah, okay. Can't land a hit? Time to hit the area of effect moves, and a Vulpix wasn't going to tank one of those and come out standing. A flash of light, and a shockwave crashed into a shield around us. When the dust cleared, the Electrode was laying in a crater and Yue had crashed into the wall behind Surge.

"Both pokemon are unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Go, Magneton."

"Ty Lee."

"Thunderbolt!"

For an instant I thought that was it for the liveliest of my Haunters, but it vanished half a second before the attack went out. Go Gengar line bullshit.

"Shadow Ball." She popped back into being close to the Magneton, formed the ball in an instant, and launched it. That was all the overgrown magnet needed though. Apparently it was experienced enough to counter on reflex, and a Thunderbolt fried Ty Lee before the Shadow Ball even hit. Didn't need the computer to tell me she was out, either, all that was left was a puddle of gas in the floor. Damnit. To her credit, the ball of negative energy actually seemed to have done something, but it seemed like it was up to Big Small Sis to clean up.

I recalled my Haunter, dimly hearing the computer in the background, and focused all of my senses on the battle, trying to get every single detail without pressing against the Imprison too hard. Luna hopped out of my jacket and walked up to the arena, entering at an angle. Right then, no need to worry about Surge.

"Flamethrower." His look of surprise was a balm to my aching soul, especially when my sister parried the Thunderbolt his Magneton had thrown with a one handed Protect, and then unleashed a torrent of blue fire that enveloped his pokemon with her left hand. She traced the stream of fire all the way down to the ground before letting up. No need to take chances. She hadn't melted the Magneton, but it was glowing red hot.

"Magneton is unable to battle. Please send out your final pokemon."

"Raichu, finish this." Wow, those things are cute as fuck.

The Protect that appeared in Luna's hand did so the instant Raichu started generating a Thunderbolt and blocked the full attack. The counter Psychic was similarly blindingly fast, but the Raichu was nimble on its feet and sidestepped mostly out of the way, its tail getting clipped pretty hard. Minor to no damage. First blood to Luna.

What followed was pure beauty. That Raichu was definitely more than Surge expected me to be able to handle. It wasn't keeping up with Luna, but it was making an attempt, and not failing completely. There was no time for orders, from either of us, not without our psychic bond, and not at all for Surge. It was a literally lightning fast slugging match, and Luna was loving every single second of it. Battle precognition let her know when to block or prepare to redirect the lightning attacks, and her psychic senses let her aim without actually having to look where she was shooting. The Raichu had the speed of a properly trained member of its line to try to dodge Luna's attacks, and the instantaneous nature of electric attacks to threaten her with.

It ended abruptly. We had the stamina of going at our mothers for years and years at full tilt, the Raichu did not. It stumbled and got nailed hard by a Psychic into the wall behind Surge.

"Raichu is unable to battle. Winner: Pokemon Trainer Red."

Surge was staring hard at me. It wasn't a glare, per se, there was no animosity in his eyes, just intensity. That had to have been one of, if not his best Raichu, and Luna wasn't even winded. Sure, Yue and Ty Lee had gone down in one hit, but he had to know, nothing the first two pokemon had done could have touched my sister.

As it was, the only reason the Explosion thing worked was because I wasn't available to act as the command and control unit of our team, and Luna wasn't used to it, hadn't thought to order Yue to use Protect as soon as the danger was apparent. Then Magneton would have been switched into a setup field. Yue would likely not have won, she didn't have the stamina yet, but she'd have worn it down enough that Ty Lee could have beaten it. In the end, if he'd still sent out that Raichu the final fight would have been exactly the same, but this highlighted the need for me to get better soon. Luna might not need my help, but the others still did.

Also I'm pretty sure we used both our brains for extra combined processing power when we fought together, sort of like a mind meld, and extra processing power is always good. Definitely wanted to get back to that. I missed my sister's presence.

"I find myself truly surprised. It's not something that happens often. As a Gym Leader you learn to teach your challengers how to improve, how to grow. You I intended to beat down into the ground from the start. You need rest and time to heal, keeping you stuck here seemed like the best way of doing that."

He shook his head, "Then you opened with a well coordinated stalling guerilla strategy. I figured, your starter, probably your strongest and best trained, maybe with a premade strategy from mommy or daddy, sacrifice Electrode to take her out and Magneton should be enough to take whatever else. When the Haunter failed to perform I thought the battle was over. Then Short Stuff 2 came out and everything I thought about power curves went out the fucking window. I congratulate you on your training ability, and on softening me up with your other pokemon before letting out the big gun."

"Take your badge and get out. Try to get healthy and drop by next time you're in Vermillion, hopefully not high as a kite." Well okay then. I mean, what do you say to that? So Luna climbed into my jacket and we walked back to the Center.


	25. The Path 11

When I got back to my room Gary had left and was nowhere to be seen. I worried a little about him but a question to Nurse Jenny revealed he'd left half an hour after me and he'd looked pretty determined. Alright then. I considered leaving him a Haunter, but I knew exactly what he'd think of such a gesture. Yeah, better not. No need to needle his pride with what he would see as a handout from the aunt he'd been chasing for the last two years of his life. I had zero doubts he could beat Surge in his first try, he was smart and a good trainer, didn't even need to know what he had in his team to know this. Why ruin his post victory happy? I mean, beyond for my own amusement, and I wasn't feeling that mean.

Brat would probably go sniffing around for a Dark type to counter my Gengars and a heavy poison user for Luna. Hm. Time would tell.

Now, where to next? Normally people went for Celadon and Saffron around the same time they did Vermillion, but to get to Celadon I had to get close to Saffron, and I wasn't stepping anywhere near Sabrina in my current state. Either she was a Rocket or she was fucking crazy, neither option was acceptable right now. That left Fuschia and Cinnabar as my only options until I healed. Fuck. Getting to either would be a pain in the ass. Why couldn't I just take a boat to… Huh. Fuck me. This wasn't the games, the ports did more than just exist for S.S. Anne or whatever special ship of the day existed to sail out of.

That's how I found myself at the harbor after laughing my ass off at how technology, just like phenomenal psychic powers, made life easier. I may have gotten some disturbed looks from the people at the Center when I laughed, wonder why? A little looking around, during which I totally didn't stumble way too much, fuck you, some questions, and I found myself on a boat bound for Fuschia City Harbor. The perks of the account my mothers had setup for my journey and the fact that I never really used it. Barely made a dent in the balance. Batman's real superpower saves the day. Or me from an annoying over a week-long circuitous walk to Fuschia.

Unfortunately there were rules about pokemon battling and training on the boat, and while I generally didn't care about silly things like rules, the bed in my cabin was very comfy, and really, I could relax a little for once, and I was tired, and it was a long trip, and why was I even bothering to make excuses in my own head? Not even the prospect of the nearly assured nightmares I'd have kept me from falling asleep in minutes. Later, Luna woke me up long enough to feed me, water me, let me take care of business, and then fall back asleep.

I saw their faces, smelled the blood, they asked the question they always asked. Why? Why? In the end, the answer was the same. Luna. I saw the future where I died, saw father's suffering, my mothers' suffering, my sister's suffering, her slow withering death and-

"We have arrived at Fuschia City Harbor, please take all your belongings and proceed to the exit ramp."

I was sweaty, cold, and my heart was beating so hard you'd think it was trying to imitate a hummingbird. Also, pain, but hey, progress, I actually didn't feel like dying. I picked up my sister and deposited her in my jacket, grabbed my bag, and walked out ready to smack some poison types around like bitches. No, seriously, me fighting this Gym was so unfair. My whole team shat on it.

We walked off into the city with the sun rising from ahead of us. My soul still hurt, but my phenomenal cosmic powers felt normal from behind the Imprison. I think, I would take one last day with the seal on, use it training, maybe at the beach, see if we couldn't catch a good Water type, and then get a Soul Badge the next day. I wasn't willing to walk into a poison den without the ability to personally manipulate every aspect of my environment.

A quick trip to the Pokemon Center to get a room and my pokemon checked out, and we were back out the door heading south to the Route 19 Beach. When I got there it was mostly deserted, probably something to do with how early it was. I'd slept through the full sixteen hours of the boat ride though, and I was wired. Not being in so much pain felt great. A quick throw had Yue seeing the sea for the first time in her life, and Ty Lee annoying Mai. Again. Perfect fucking names, I swear.

I barked orders at them and they were training the styles we'd made for them. It helped they liked them, since they were so much like playing, so they just saw it as a more structured game. Luna was practicing keeping a filtering rotating current of air around her at all times without needing to focus on it, or causing a mini sandstorm. Couldn't have some cheeky poison getting in without noticing.

"Alright sis, see if you can't feel a psychic signature out in the water."

"Ralts?"

"Yes, out in the water. I've decided, we need a Starmie." I felt her mind cast out into the sea. We sat there on the beach for a few hours, when I finally felt Luna act. A few seconds later a bow wave formed on the water surface and then there was a Staryu floating in front of us, surrounded by a corona of purple psychic energy. Beautiful. Who needs a fishing rod when you have phenomenal cosmic power?

"Hey Luna, you think you can get it calling out? Use it as bait to call for more? We want the best of the best, after all." She thought about it for a moment and started tweaking the Staryu's mind, until it's gem started shining a bright red and a barely there sensation could be felt all across the beach. Yeah, that'd do it.

A few minutes later three more Staryus jumped out of the water.

"Yue, Freeze-Dry." She bounded over and froze all three in one breath. Pokeballs out, catches. I let this repeat a few more times before catching the bait too, for a total of fifteen Staryus. Now I just needed to sort out which was the best one. "Good girl. You can take a break for a bit, but I want you practicing once it's over." I noticed a Krabby walking around and well, Kinglers were cool. A tiny Psychic later and it was also caught.

Would this count as my beach episode? I wasn't in a swimming suit, or getting in the water, but since that was never happening I guess this had to count for something. Ah well, whatever.


	26. The Path 12

For the first time in weeks, I woke up early. Today, I would have my power back, and today, after a morning of brief psychic exercise, you know, to make sure everything was in working order, I would have my Soul Badge. Luna put her hands on my head and with a brief exertion of will and a flash of light, I felt the seal shatter. The world expanded around me, I could feel my sister fully again, I could feel the future pressing down upon my mind, begging to be seen, I could feel the minds of everyone around me. It was exhilarating. Power burst forth from within, from my soul, a slight burn coursing through my body as it got used to the constant flow of energy once again.

Heh

Hehehe

Hahahahahahahahaha.

"Unlimited Power! Hahahahahahahaha!" I couldn't help the maniacal cackle from my place floating in the middle of my room at the Pokemon Center, static discharges coursing all over my body from waste power, everything not nailed down floating around me. The window panes in the whole building rattling in their frames, the bulbs in my room bursting in a shower of sparks. There was even an ominous echo to my voice and everything. This was everything I could have ever expected from my big comeback. "I'm baaaaaack."

I tried to shift as much of the power buildup into the less physical spectrum, I didn't want to demolish this wing of the center, after all. It'd be a huge burst, a psychic spotlight pointing to Fuschia, but really, who was there to notice that was close enough to see it and also be a threat? Hah. I grabbed my things and walked out of the room. Had to find a clearing to test my gift, work out any kinks.

An hour later I was a bit deep in the forest to the northeast of the city and playing target for my sister and pokemon. Combat precognition seemed to be working even better now, and dodging or redirecting blind was working magnificently, and while neither Luna and I were going all out, it said good things about the state of things. A thought at my other pokemon had them split off to do their own thing, warm up done.

Time for the all out slugfest.

We lifted off the ground as one and then everything was Psychics, Protects, dodging, and the occasional bursts of fire. Honestly, this was the kind of fighting I lived for. Blindingly fast paced and with no margin for error. One wrong move would see me grievously wounded, same for Luna, if to a lesser extent. After a while we started slowing down. The test was successful, I was only slightly affected by my prolonged lack of use of psychic powers, a little more winded than I should have been, but I'd be back in top shape soon.

Now I just needed to decide: Assume Direct Control of the Killer Haunter before or after my Gym battle. Decisions. In the end, I wanted to be fresh for the battle, and the breaking of that Haunter was going to be a monumental effort, with the possibility of real danger. Better take the Gym while healthy-ish. My soul was actually burning a little stronger than before, so there was likely a tie between my phenomenal cosmic powers and my healing soul. The flowing power within me did help a little with the supernatural cold, and the combat precognition also helped with clumsiness, but fuck me if they weren't still there, like an itch I couldn't scratch.

Right then, Pokemon Center for some quick rejuvenation, food, and then smashing faces. A couple hours later and we stood in front of the Fuchsia Gym, bellies full, completely chill, and ready to kick ass. We crossed the doors and beheld a dojo straight out of the memories of my past life. Felt fucking weird. It was so stereotypically Japanese, and yet there was no Japan.

At the center of it all sat a young woman, meditating, or so I assumed, given the steady breathing and general stillness. There wasn't a significant psychic presence to her, so I guess they took the ninja thing seriously around here. A spare thought located several hidden others that were all but invisible even despite knowing they were there. Fucking ninja bullshit. Wish I could do that.

I started filtering the air around me. Not paranoia if it's plausible someone would and could poison you. Ninja bullshit meant could was assumed. The impending smackdown I was about to issue allowed for would.

"I'm here to challenge for the Soul Badge." I felt the woman's mind latch onto my words, coming more fully into the here and now, away from the depths. She stood, assessing me, and took out a pokeball from somewhere.

"Is that so? Five pokemon, no substitutions." What? She was the leader? Wasn't it supposed to be Koga? The fuck? She gestured to one of the ninja and he came over with a device that registered my Pokedex.

"Pokemon Trainer Red challenges Gym Leader Janine for a Soul Badge." Janine. Wasn't she Koga's daughter? The fuck? Where was Koga? Wasn't he the leader? Well fuck, my memory was even more unreliable than I thought.

She released a Crobat and it started flitting about at high speeds. Right then, Ty Lee. My Haunter was in motion as soon as she came out of her ball, hand flying in different directions to try and pincer the Crobat. Speed vs. Ghost bullshit. It was really quite interesting to watch. The moment the Crobat go too close, Ty Lee's body would vanish and reappear elsewhere, while her hands kept harassing the bat, trying to grab it long enough to end the fight. It was fun to watch, but in the end the next time the Crobat got close, instead of disappearing, Ty Lee slammed a Psychic in its face. Try to ninja bullshit a ghost again, see how well that goes. They can do everything the ninja can, only better, and with more style.

She followed up with a Venomoth. That was honestly about the only thing she had that didn't get horribly rolled by my whole team without being able to retaliate. It was time to play energy tag. My favorite game~

She started by firing off a Psychic, I followed with Shadow Ball, and really, it just degenerated from there to the kind of thing that my whole team was exceptionally well used to. Still, the Venomoth was strong and very fast, and actually managed to hit Ty Lee before she could land her own hit. She wasn't down, but it was a matter of time now. She was moving sluggishly, and only lasted one more minute before taking another Psychic and crumbling into a coherent pile of smog in the floor.

What to do? I recalled her and sent out Mai. I mean, why not? It ended similarly, but this time Mai tagged the Venomoth a couple of times before going down. Another recall beam and I sent out Yue. Time for ninja bullshit of my own. Double Teams and Confuse Rays for all. The Venomoth went down to an Aurora Beam that came from seemingly everywhere, but in reality was directly in front of it.

When the Weezing came out I knew I really shouldn't have bothered and just let Luna roll over the whole lot of them. When it started spewing poison everywhere, I felt this urgent need to break the rules and blow it up. Fucking overgrown disgusting balls of filth. Still, Yue simply went with a quick Safeguard and started harassing it. I could tell the strategy was getting to… Whoever the fuck this Gym Leader was, didn't even need psychic powers to feel the aggravation rolling off of her. Yue was going to be fucking fun to let loose at the Conference.

I had a split second of warning before she ordered her next move, inadvertently taking a page from Surge's book, and having the Weezing use Explosion. But it was was enough. This was why it was important I had my powers. I'd ordered Yue to use Protect before Janine even finished giving her own command.

"Explosion!" All that delicious frustration. The shockwave broke upon a shield around Luna and I, not even a ruffled hair. The smoke cleared and that frustration went through the fucking roof. She growled, an actual out loud growl, and recalled her pokemon from the wrecked bit of Gym floor it lay on.

"Ariados, go! Web everything down!"

Is this what a bukkake looks like? Just sticky white ropes of gooey stuff fucking everywhere? There was even a semicircle in front of me where the shield had blocked a stray rope. For as dubious as it looked, it was effective and managed to tie down Yue long enough for the Ariados to leap on top of her start cocooning her. I recalled her and sent out Luna. Suffer not a spider to live. Here was my answer to whether my past life's arachnophobia had made it through. I could feel my skin fucking crawling just looking at the thing, with its jerky movements and totally fucking alien everything. All of this magnified to the size of a fucking Ariados? Breathing seemed to be becoming difficult.

"End it." My voice came out strangled. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think. I closed my eyes, blocking all thought of the ginormous fucking spider a few meters away from me, focusing on making the shield around me indestructible. An infinity of power to keep it away from me. I heard a crunch off in the distance and my sister in my mind, pushing down on the terror until I could think again. I opened my eyes, to see Janine send out her last pokemon, a second Weezing, for all of a second, before it got put through the wall behind her.

"Winner: Pokemon Trainer Red."

"A worthy fight, I look forward to seeing how far you go, Red. You are well versed in the fighting styles favored by this Gym." She gestured, and another ninja, this one a different one than the Pokedex one, was by my side holding out a Soul Badge in a nice case. I took it, all the while feeling my sister pushing down the gibbering terror caused by the Ariados.

"Thank you." I walked out, senses in high gear until I was a few meters away from the Gym. I relaxed and decided to celebrate, hopefully that way I'd forget about the spider. Time to find a good restaurant. Maybe I'd, uh, acquire a bottle of wine or something. Did they have tequila in the pokeworld? I fished around my bag for the painkillers. I mean, they were probably sedatives too, right?

I found my restaurant not long after the delicious warmth of the pills had made everything nice and fuzzy. Soul pain was pretty much gone, and my phenomenal cosmic power coupled with magic pills made the supernatural cold that had been haunting me mostly go away. I stumbled on the doorway though. The pills didn't actually help on that front, probably made it worse really. A nice steak of what was probably Tauros meat with asparagus, mashed potatoes, and gravy. On the way out a bottle of cheap wine floated its way into my bag, and enough cash to pay for it floated itself into a money drawer.

A slight flex of telekinesis popped the cork, and I took a swig. Just as good as I remembered. Luna floated the bottle down to her in my jacket and took her own swig. Before long we were both drunk as fuck and giggling about every random thing. We walked back to the Pokemon Center after light drinking for a few hours. Our mothers must never learn of this day.

We stumbled into our room at the Center, and I saw the future, a dart sinking into my neck, everything going dark, and well, the Giovanni thing that already featured prominently in my nightmares from back when the thing with the Rocket grunts happened. I jerked out of the way in time for it to miss, and the second try pinged off of a reflex shield. Luna was out of my jacket and flinging a Psychic that went very wide and smashed a spiderweb into the wall. More darts pinged off of shields around us and I could feel the panic going through whoever the fuck that was' mind.

A combined smoke and flash bomb went off and I simply made sure to cover the exits in shields too. Fucker wasn't getting out alive. That made it easier. No need to worry about destroying their mind. A flash of psychic power directed at the only unfamiliar mind in the room stunned them long enough to get nailed by a Psychic from Luna. Some degree of training against mental attacks then. That was fine. I needed practice for the Haunter.

Drunk and high I may have been, but I recognized the opportunity in front us. Regular Rocket grunts? Not worth the effort. A Rocket ninja? There was a lot of knowledge and skills to be had here. Couldn't waste such an excellent opportunity to become an expert in ninja bullshit. Luna held her, for we finally had enough mind to spare to notice such things, and I dove into her mind. Espionage, counterespionage, combat, poisons, weapons, esoteric knowledge, stealth, security, breaking security, anything that was even slightly useful we ripped out, integrating it into our memories, chunks of her soul tearing away with every bit we took.

Mental contamination… In the end, it was worth it to know how best to protect ourselves outside of a pokemon battle or encounter. We would deal with some memories of the person we'd just destroyed if necessary, it was a price we were willing to pay. We'd stained our hands with the blood of our enemies already, what was a little more, and something worse? Our path was always going to end up dripping blood.

The empty husk that had once been Misao Kirk, retainer of Leader Janine, loyal spy of Team Rocket, climbed itself out of the window, walked to the wood southeast of the city, and slashed its throat.


	27. The Path 13

I awoke to a pounding headache. It was familiar in a way I hadn't felt in over ten years. Hangover. What? How? I ran through the day, unlimited power, training montage, food, smacking around a Crobat, a Venomoth, a Weezing, and… an Ariados. Full body shudder. Hangover protesting the shudder. Fucking ow. Right. Freakout, Luna wrecking face and… blank. How the fuck did I get that drunk? A bleary look around the room showed it to be a fucking mess, the door securely locked, window locked, no immediate threats within sight.

Adrenaline, a fight. We'd fought. Not sport either, for our lives. Right, likely poisoned darts all over the room. A gesture had them all floating up to rest on the desk, safely away from my feet. I checked on Luna, making sure she was fine, before righting the room as best I could. There wasn't anything special about the darts, but somehow I knew the dried purple liquid was a mild soporific made from Venomoth sleeping powder, with little danger of causing a negative reaction with other drugs already in the bloodstream.

We'd… eaten someone, essentially. Torn apart their mind, taken what we found useful for ourselves, and discarded the rest. A traitor, to her master and to common decency. Just more blood spilled at the altar of ambition.

We needed a shower. I shook Luna awake, and we spent an hour trying to exhaust the Center's hot water supply. It certainly didn't make my hands feel any less bloody, but at least I felt better. Not to mention the soul pain was fully gone, which meant I was likely fully recovered. Right then, day of figuring out what the fuck I'd taken from the Rocket operative, training, and relaxing until I wasn't hungover anymore. Tomorrow I'd head for Celadon City through the Cycling Road.

We found the Center's cafeteria a bit busy, but there was enough food left. A glance at my poketch showed 12PM. Right. Brought memories of my past life's party days. Bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs, fucking delicious greasy food. We'd been eating for a few minutes when I heard laughter ripple through the whole room. What? I looked up to find everyone focused on the TVs in the room, a late morning show playing in all of them, showing CCTV footage of a wine bottle floating its way out of a rack and into a child's messenger bag, the clip switched to one of a large pokedollar bill floating into a money drawer, then switching to an outdoor camera showing the child popping the cork with telekinesis and taking a swig, before looping from the start.

No.

No, no, no, no.

No fucking way.

No you fucking don't.

What.

Me. The video quality was trash and black and white, so I wasn't recognizable in any way, but I knew, even if I didn't remember it happening. Luna wasn't in the video so likely she was in her usual place in my jacket. Someone finally unmuted the TVs, and we could hear the hosts laughing their assess off about the psychic kid who wanted a drink and was generous about paying for what they took.

Oh no. I could feel the new instincts I had from the ninja screaming about the lack of attention paid to the security cameras. No one would recognize me from that video, no one knew Pokemon Trainer Red was a psychic either, but if that video circulated enough… Our mothers would know. Oh. Oh no. I was feeling faint. We needed to get the fuck out of the city, in case the video got popular enough to cross the region inside of a day. None of our mothers had ever been to Fuschia, but father had, and it would be trivial for Gardemom to use the memory to get everyone here.

Right then, Celadon righ the fuck now, after throwing the trail off towards Cinnabar by buying a ticket. It would show in my account activity, and maybe they'd be waiting for me in Cinnabar while I was taking care of business with Leader Erika, then ping back down to Fuschia and actually take a boat to Cinnabar, beat Blaine, Teleport back up to Vermillion or Lavender and finally square off against Sabrina. Yup. That's how things were happening. There would be no encounters with our mothers or my father until the Conference, some months from now, when they'd have forgotten about it already.

A quick trip to a clothing store had a less conspicuous outfit bought, complete with a hat to hide my hair. Paranoia? Maybe, but better paranoid than caught. We bought the misdirection ticket in the normal outfit, before changing into the boring pants and long sleeve shirt I'd just bought, and making a run for the Gate to Route 18. We skipped it with judicious use of phenomenal cosmic powers to float over it, and then did something we hadn't tried before. We floated high up and used line of sight Teleports from a high vantage point to speed through the Cycling Road.

Celadon here I am. Oh look, another Snorlax. Well, I mean, why not? Double Psychic naval artillery strike and that Snorlax didn't even wake up from its nap before it was already knocked the fuck out. Pokeball out, catch, and run the fuck to the world famous, probably, Celadon Department Store. We were speedrunning this shit. Rushed as I was, I had enough presence of mind to be impressed at the sheer size of the place. Fucking shops everywhere. Bright colors, exorbitant prices for random stuff, it was really quite the sight.

I approached an aide to find out at what floor I could buy elemental stones, and was directed to the fourth floor. A ridiculous amount of cash later, I had two Water Stones, and an Ice Stone, my main purpose in coming to the mall, and one of all the others. Thankfully they were small chunks, so they weren't very heavy. A little bit of work with Yue until she learned Sheer Cold and I'd evolve her. Right. Right.

I had a choice to make.

I decided to visit a coffee shop nearby both the Game Corner and the Celadon Gym. Our psychic bond with Ty Lee and Mai was strong enough that we could use them as relays for our more esoteric psychic abilities, so we sent one to each place on intelligence gathering missions. Thank fuck Haunter had strong psychic senses. We needed to be able to take both places one after the other in quick succession and be ready to get the fuck out to Fuschia.

If the Rocket fuckers were too busy reeling from having one of their main bases razed to the ground they'd probably be too busy to be greedy cunts ready to take potshots at me. A little mind fuckery here and there and I tagged most of the minds down in the Game Corner base as "Necessary Collateral Damage". Disgusting animals. Some more sniffing around found me the rooms with the most valuable loot as seen from the mind of the Rocket Admin in charge of the base. We couldn't get enough resolution to get the particulars of what that loot was and why it was valuable, but fuck it, who cared? It was free soon to be my stuff.

As for Erika I needn't have bothered sending Mai. Honestly. Nothing impressive or interesting going on there.

Right.

We changed clothing in the coffee store bathroom, wouldn't do to smash faces without my signature style. One Teleport through that weird in between place in reality with Mai as a homing beacon later and we were entering through the Gym doors. There were two aides just inside.

"I am here to challenge for the Rainbow Badge."

"Oh my, you look so cute!"

"Your hair is amazing!"

"Thanks, but, you know, challenge?"

"Oh, of course, right this way. I'll take you to the battle arena." One of the aides said, guiding us deeper into the Gym and gesturing to her partner. "Amy here will go inform Leader Erika and they'll meet us there."

We entered an arena not much different than Surge's, just dirt, but there were bleachers for spectators, and actual windows. At least there was that. Honestly, I was kind of disappointed in how simple the arenas were so far. The first two had been the best by far, especially Brock's. At the other end a door opened and Amy the aide and Leader Erika stepped through. I handed my pokedex to the aide beside me, and she registered it into a machine like they'd used in Fuschia. Good to see wireless tech expanding.

"This will be a three on three match, no substitutions."

"Pokemon Trainer Red challenges Gym Leader Erika for the Rainbow Badge."

"Go, Tangela!"

"Yue."

"Vine Whip!"

I held my snow fox off from going through with her usual strategy. There was no point here. If she could hold her own against a stronger Gym, she could brute force this one. Ice Beam barrage. She dodged the whips and got started on making me an ice sculpture. She landed three in a row before Eika recalled the Tangela.

"Go, Victreebel, Stun Powder!"

It actually managed to sneeze a load of powder into Yue's face, setting her on a sneezing fit for a few seconds during which the Victreebel landed a few whip lashes. Right then, fuck this shit.

"Blizzard."

Then everything was a lovely winter wonderland, and there was a frozen plant in front of Yue. Then it got recalled.

"Go, Vileplume!"

"Return, Yue." A technical loss, since I'd recalled her, but, well. "Luna."

She hopped out into the field long enough to slam a Psychic into the Vileplume and send it into a wall, before returning to my jacket. This was going to become a problem when she evolved. She wouldn't be able to fit in my jacket and act as my personal heat generator anymore.

"Ralts." Luna had sensed my thoughts and patted me, reassuring me that if she ever needed to evolve, she'd' be sure to find a suitable replacement. Okay then.

"Winner: Pokemon Trainer Red."

A moment of stunned silence from the Gym people, before I got my badge and I was power walking out to somewhere we could Teleport without being seen. A few minutes later and I was homing in on Ty Lee in one of the Rocket storage rooms. It was full of pokeballs. Excellent. A little looking around found me a Larvitar, two Dratini, a Porygon, and a Sneasel. These were keepers. A quick check with my pokedex found all of the balls were registered as Game Corner prizes. Excellent, into the bag.

I considered taking the Koffing and Voltorbs to use as makeshift explosives, but it felt needlessly cruel to the pokemon. They were mistreated enough already.

"Mai, Tai Lee." My ghosts materialized in front of me. "Feast." I sent them all the mental signatures we'd previously labeled, and they went wild. Barely a few minutes later I felt the first Rocket die. This wasn't blood spilled upon the altar of ambition, no, this was a slaughter, a culling. Team Rocket had been allowed to grow too much, today the tree was pruned, and maybe this way others would think twice about joining. I felt the moment people realized what was happening, the sudden spike in ambient terror, a change in the atmosphere of the place. Screams were everywhere, and they were delicious. My Haunter were too strong for any Rocket but Giovanni, and the leader wasn't here.

We walked at a leisurely pace to the other storeroom, pausing only long enough to rip the life out of the five grunts we ran into. We kept none of the structure, turning it into pure Life, losing a bunch of the power in the process. We got less, but there was no risk of mental contamination this way, before eating it. We felt our power grow with each life we ate, and in the distance we felt as our Haunters grew into Gengar. Everything was coming up Red Azula.

The second storeroom itself was the crown prize though. I could feel destiny calling us to it, guiding our steps. Here we would find another stepping stone to greatness. We blew the door off its frame, and walked straight to the back, where a heavy steel case lay on a desk. This was the most valuable thing in this whole wretched place. A thought wrenched it open and inside were two tiny stones. One was clear, the other one shifted through the rainbow when seen from different angles, with a leaf-like pattern somehow projecting from the center. Luna hopped out and pushed her power into the blank stone, until a similar pattern shone through.

A Mega Stone and a Key Stone. We'd have to get them set, matching chokers would be best. I think, given the situation, if anyone that knew me were to stumble upon me right this moment, they would have me committed. Or try to, anyway. I couldn't help the laughter, or the wide smile. People did say you couldn't spell slaughter without laughter. Luna took her stone with her back into my jacket, and I put mine into an inner pocket. Yes. Everything was going perfectly.

Mai and Ty Lee came back to us, their work finished, sinking into my shadow. It felt right, they belonged there. The cold intensified, as Gengar naturally cooled the world around them by a few degrees, but our power was greater now, our soul stronger, we could bear the cold better now.

We just needed to leave a message.

The Rocket Admin had barricaded himself in his office as soon as shit started going down, but it would avail him nothing. The door to his office blew in, and he was mid flinch when we ripped the life out of him. An effort of will saw his neck open up and his blood flow out to paint a message on his wall:

"Death to Team Rocket."

A thought to Ty Lee and Mai had them go out and destroy all computers, taking care to completely smash all storage devices, in the facility. Just in case I'd missed a camera. A Teleport later and we were checking in at the Pewter City Pokemon Center. The plan had changed, we needed rest. We would sleep, and in the morning we would get our toys ready, all of them.


	28. The Path 14

The next morning I awoke feeling like I had a spiritual hangover and indigestion. Weird as it was to even think, my soul felt bloated. Guess there's consequences to massacring a whole bunch of people and eating their souls. Ah well, we'd use the morning to find a jeweler. Maybe it was silly, but it felt like Pewter was a perfect place to find one. I wasn't sure if it was some psychic sense telling me this, or a forgotten memory pushing forward, whatever it was, we got ready and went out.

The city's downtown was really quite homey, with lots of mom and pop's shops. We found a jeweler nestled in between a grocer and a smithy. A short conversation later and the old woman that ran the place agreed to set the stones on choker mounts for a very reasonable price. We now had two hours to kill until we could come back. Touristy stuff then. I really didn't feel like doing fucking anything. Yesterday's bloodlust and high had faded and now the cold was getting to me again. I still wasn't going to recall Mai and Ty Lee though, I liked knowing I had two soul eating abominations ready to defend me at a moment's notice, right in my shadow.

I was sweaty, agitated, cold, fucking anxious as fuck because fuck me I made the news in a very obvious way, my whole body ached, and I had a runny nose. Ugh. Today was shaping up to be a chore of a day. Maybe some food would help. We'd test the Staryu, well, Luna would, she felt much better. Yeah, fuck touristy stuff, food and rest. Once back at the Pokemon Center I had delicious food to nom on while doing Pokemon Trainer administrative work. Seriously, who'd have thought that was a thing? I had my Gengars stricken from my combat roster and set as helper pokemon. Hopefully no one would bother asking how something like a Gengar could be a helper pokemon.

A quick look around had me doing something I should have done a week ago when I first had a moment after Lavender, and flagged the Killer Haunter as an extremely dangerous pokemon, not to be released under any circumstances. Wouldn't want father getting eaten if I sent it to his ranch temporarily and he set it loose to study or just to let it get some air. Hm. I had a good name for it too. Ozai the Gengar would be a nice name, even if for now it was just Ozai the Haunter.

I couldn't register the pokemon I'd looted from the Rockets all in one go without making it very obvious I'd been at the site of a massacre to anyone who cared to look, so those stayed in the bag for now. Not like I had plans to train them any time soon. The Larvitar and Dratini were very slow growers, and I had zero fucking clue how to go about evolving a Porygon into one of the useful stages. Same for the Sneasel. Besides, if I wanted another heavy hitter I was better of looking for one of the Kanto or Johto starters and evolving those. They were naturally fast growers with strong bulky final stages. Or get one of my Snorlaxes. Snorlaxii? Eh, didn't matter.

Why did I have two Rattata?

They were nearly worthless pokemon on any level of the fighting circuit and- oh, right. The pot. A quick switch around and I had one eat a little bit of pot raw, and the other one eat a chunk I'd flash heated while In a bubble of psychic energy. I'd check on them in an hour or so to see how they were reacting. Luna came back from outside where she'd been putting my Staryu army through its paces, and handed me a single ball, sending the rest of them back to father's ranch. Perfect. She sent me memories of the Staryu in my hand being head and shoulders above the rest, with an ungodly amount of stamina. Definitely perfect. A quick command had it transferred to a Premier Ball. Only best balls for my best pokemon.

Everything ached, still. Maybe taking one of the pills wouldn't be too bad? I knew I was probably overdoing it with them, but fuck it. I reached out, pulled one out of my bag, and swallowed it. A few minutes later and everything was wonderful and warm, sort of, and fuzzy again. A nasty suspicion was worming its way through my mind, but I was going to use me some industrial strength denial until I couldn't anymore.

The Rattata looked to be in good health, but the one that ate the flash heated pot looked stoned as fuck, so success. We had us some marijuana for later. I recalled the rats and sent them of to father's ranch. Least I could do for using them as test subjects was give them a life of luxury. Hm. I labeled them as "In need of observation", just in case time showed negative side effects. I doubted it, my future sight gave me the feeling things were golden on this front, but better safe than sorry. Father's aides would keep an eye on them.

A little while later saw us picking up our new chokers. We couldn't work on Mega Evolution until Luna evolved, but that was fine. I was pretty sure we'd be able to manage it with little effort. Now that I wasn't hungover from a wild drunken night and after some time to think on the matter, I realized I'd perhaps overreacted. Yes, our mothers were unlikely to take kindly to us getting smashed out of our minds, or some of our other activities, but they were unlikely to find out for some time. The Poke World I lived in wasn't quite at the same level of the information age my past life's world had been.

The internet wasn't an all-encompassing thing yet, there wasn't a centralized video site or search engine like Youtube or Google, smart devices were practically non-existent, with my pokedex being one of the first of the kind. Even then, the pokedex was far from what I knew would come in the future. Videos didn't go viral yet in this day and age. In my old life that clip would have circulated the globe in hours, in this one it would take months. Though I knew it would, I'd seen it, it was the kind of video that made someone internet famous, so it wasn't getting dropped anytime soon, but chances were our family wouldn't find out until much later.

Thought for later, I didn't need to register the Porygon to indoctrinate it to follow my every command and use it as my personal artificial intelligence for literally any purpose that was even a little related to electronics. It was actually better if I didn't register it, that way there was no record of me having it and thus no suspicion could be cast upon me in matter of electronic crime. Yup, I was going to have to get me some black market conversion kits for the Porygon's pokeball, and some of the others too actually, deniable assets were always useful. Maybe even Ty Lee and Mai.

There was no rush right now though. Rushing would lead to making crazy decisions. More crazy decisions. Like slaughtering a Rocket base and eating the souls of everyone inside. At least we'd had the presence of mind to wipe all evidence of our being there once we were done. I had this feeling I had impulse control issues, and while Luna sometimes kept me from acting on some impulses she was perfectly happy to go along with others. Ah well, I think I'll take a breather to do a training montage from hell to bring Ozai and my still nameless Staryu up to par with Yue, as well as finishing Yue's training and evolving her. I was months ahead of the curve, already at five badges and not even a full month into my pokemon journey. I'd lost perspective. I'd really lost perspective. Fucking no one could match my pace and here I was worrying about not going fast enough.

Right then, new goal: Train Staryu to be able to single handedly take on Blaine, then once we have Ozai trained up swing by Sabrina's to get the Marsh Badge. Then more training until Giovanni gets back to doing his job as a Gym Leader. Or training and swing by Johto for someone's badge. Maybe Ghost dude or Dragon lady. Their Gyms seemed like the most interesting ones. With how much training time we were going to get before the conference we might be able to roll the whole of my competition, the Elite Four, and the Champion. I might go legendary hunting and stroll by letting everyone think it's the toughest and then when someone finally takes it down, boom Luna fucking stomps everything and everyone.

Yeah, I might just do that. Lose with one pokemon to give the competition false hope.

Thinking on it, I wasn't sure there was ever going to be an esports boom in this world. Pokebattling was so easy to get into, such a big enormous facet of everyday life, that I just couldn't see esports taking off that way they had in my first life. Shame, there was something about esports that really drew me in. Ah well, I guess we'd just have to make do by smashing faces the old fashioned way.

Well then, plans were made, I had delicious fuzzy feelings in me, time was on our side, and I got work done. I was taking the rest of today off in my delicious Pokemon Center provided bed, just luxuriating in feeling deliciousness. Yup. I drifted off to sleep some hours later, thinking of the future, pointedly ignoring all of the glaring issues currently up with me, and enjoyed feeling Luna curled up next to me.


	29. The Path 15

The breaking of Ozai was an interesting event. Mostly because of how epic it must have looked from the outside. I mean, two Gengars holding down a Haunter a little bigger than them, and two psychics just pouring mojo into it. I felt like I was in a horror movie doing an exorcism or something. It was great. Mostly it was just hardcoding the imperative to protect us and follow our every command, rewriting its mind into loyalty and devotion. It was surprisingly hard work, slow going too. No wonder it's not really done, most of the time it wouldn't be worth the effort, and in those cases the individual was exceptional enough to be worth it, it'd be harder to manage, since, you know, exceptional.

It'd take most of a day, and we were going to do check ups every now and then to make sure it was holding, but in the end we had a completely loyal monster Haunter. This thing would plow through fucking anything in its path once evolved and trained. I couldn't fucking wait. Heh, Agatha was going to be fun to fight. We'd have a Gengar-off.

I needed a training spot for while I got my team in order for Blaine and Sabrina, and let's be honest, Pewter wasn't good enough for that. Maybe I could camp out at Victory Road? Or Cerulean Cave. Hm. We'd check out the cave first, since it was closer to civilization and all. We got our stuff together and checked out of the Pokemon Center. All aboard the Teleport Express. Then we were waiting for Mai and Tai Lee to find the cave while having a delicious dinner at a restaurant that sold Italian food. Seriously, the pokeworld was fucking weird. Ty Lee found the cave while Luna and I shared a dessert of ice cream over a hot brownie. Fucking delicious. We paid and Teleported to our Gengar once we were out of sight.

I could Feel the strong pokemon inside the cave. Yes. This would do nicely. We memorized the area and went to the Pokemon Center. I was tired, breaking Ozai had been hard, and- and- fuck it, and withdrawal was reaching its nasty tendrils into me again. Fucking hell, I was a fucking idiot. Now I needed to figure out how to fix this fucking problem. Maybe I could ignore it and hunt for Celebi then go back in time and stop it all from happening?

Luna looked at me like I was being an idiot. More of an idiot. Yeah, didn't think so. Now that I had fully accepted the situation and she had fully understood it, she wasn't pleased with me. Great thing about phenomenal cosmic power, it made fully understanding a situation and all of its nuances extremely easy and fast. Bad thing, there was no going into denial about what she was feeling about things. Ugh, why? Denial was so much easier.

Fine. We'd look up how to deal with this too. I had a vague memory of reading something like this, involving restraints and a lot of violence. Fuck. Damn it all. I held out for as long as I could, before the the pain and nausea got so bad I gave in. Fuck. Just as well the fucking pills were so good, otherwise I may have gone on a roaring rampage of rage instead of sleeping. I should have known better, my past life had lived something like this, and yet here I was, fooled twice. I went to sleep angry, and nightmares beset me from the very start.

A sea of faces, of people I'd killed, asking why, the scent of blood, Giovanni victorious, a scarred arm filled with track marks. I woke up, heart racing, drenched in sweat. Fucking nightmares. I checked the time, nearly six in the morning, fucking ugh, may as well get on with things. I got ready for the day and went out to the cafeteria for breakfast. At least Luna would wake up to delicious noms, then we would start our training montage from hell. I could hardly wait. We'd finally evolve Yue, let Ozai feast in the cave, train and evolve Staryu, and take the time to train my own body to integrate the fighting skills we'd taken from the ninja. Maybe finally figure out lightning, and then integrate it and fire into the fighting style. We'd get around to fixing other issues later. For now we'd do the things we knew how to do, and did so very well.

See? I'd graduated from denial to procrastination. Progress!

We parked our collective assess in Cerulean for the better part of a month. By the end, Ozai was an even bigger monster than he already was and evolved into a Gengar by eating a sizeable portion of the population of the cave, and yes, the conditioning was holding, it was actually getting stronger the more souls he ate, which was great. I likened it to the extra growth bearing down on the conditioning and entrenching it solidly at his core. Lucky me. We trained Staryu, now a Starmie until they could play energy attack bullet hell spam with Luna and I and mostly keep up for a bit. Yue mastered the highest levels of ice kitsune illusory ninja bullshit and started haunting the cave when we were there, and the Pokemon Center when we weren't. She really took to fucking with people for funsies, we were so proud.

My own progress was sufficient. I was now somewhat proficient in a very acrobatic and showy martial arts, the name of which I didn't know, that I needed to heavily augment with psionics to actually be able to fully perform. Turns out I am weak and unathletic as fuck. I mean sure, I've only been training for a month, but the future didn't look promising, which meant a lot more coming from me than from most people. Still, all put together it made for a nice upgrade in my combat capabilities, especially when I mixed in fire and lightning. I was still figuring out how to toughen myself up to being capable of tanking serious hits, but I was pretty sure I was making progress on that front. Soon I wouldn't need to be careful anymore. Soon I would be able to not care what people thought or who saw what. I was reaching the threshold where the Rockets would stop being a danger.

We started working on the Porygon too, but honestly, there wasn't much to do beyond communicating it was free from the Rockets and then it was more than happy to stay with me. I got it working on familiarizing itself with my pokedex and the computers at the Pokemon Center, but I had a feeling we were going to have to do some real work to get it ready for cybercrime. We'd have to look around for someone with experience on the matter, or learn, or eat someone who knew. Eh, something for later.

I was running out of pills, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do about that. I was a little anxious about it. I could get more without much issue, but I was hesitant. It felt like I'd be crossing a line now that I was aware what was going on. I had enough for a month, maybe. Perhaps blitzing the remaining available Gyms here in Kanto, making a run at a couple of the Johto Gyms, and then detoxing afterwards? I had no illusions that I was better on the pills than off them, but I wasn't sure how long it'd take to recover from this particular bit of my own idiocy. I needed to be ready for the Conference, come what may. I still needed to complete my championship team too. Damn it all, so many things to do, with all the time in the world, and yet I was on a deadline.

Fucking ugh.

Whatever. It was time to go, there wasn't much left to do at the cave without a full team that didn't have terrible diminishing returns. Right then, let's go wreck some faces. I felt destiny pushing me towards Blaine first, and I had no real objections to that, so we were going to pop down to Pallet, visit our mothers, hide all of the things that need hiding from them, fucking hell that list was long, visit father, and take a boat down to Cinnabar Island.

Being honest, I was a little nervous about this plan of action, for so many reasons, but I missed my mothers so much. I'd just have to be very careful. I fixed my senses on my second home, for Snowpoint would forever be my first, twisted reality until we weren't in Cerulean anymore and we were in Pallet Town, in front of the main entrance to father's compound. I felt the moment Gardemom realized we were there, love, affection, and joy pouring down on us from within. Mama and Mom were beside her, then all three of them were in front of us, two of them looking extremely surprised and with forks in their hands. Seems I'd arrived to breakfast. Lucky me. They didn't stay surprised for long and then I was having the stuffing hugged out of me.

"Hi moms." I squeaked out a greeting, the first words I'd said to them for months, and thought that maybe I should have remembered to call home sometime during the last couple months. This was also around the time I realized that I hadn't touched anyone that wasn't Luna in a long time and holy fuck but being hugged felt great. My mothers were so warm, burning with so much energy and destiny, it should have hurt, but they were my mothers and they couldn't hurt me anymore than I could hurt them.


	30. The Path 16

Our reunion was perhaps overly emotional. Okay so not really overly, since I hadn't called home for ages and essentially disappeared off the face of the earth. They had only the records from my trainer ID allowing them to have an idea of where I was, but I figure it probably ran long when father came out looking for them and found us still indulging in hugs. Then Dehlia followed, and then Daisy. Wow, okay, almost the whole family was here. I had such a weird family.

"Oh 'Zula," Twitch. I don't think I'd ever manage to not have a slight identity crisis every time I had a slight switch in the routine of what I was called. I also couldn't help the slight wince upon feeling the emotions of everyone around me when they saw me twitch. Great. Now they'd get ideas about my mental health and stability again. "You're so cold love, did you just come from Snowpoint?"

"Oh, um no. I'm not sure what to say about that, I don't feel colder than usual." Let's just not mention that my usual has become extremely cold since Lavender, and colder still since three Gengars started living in my shadow.

"You're so pale and thin too, have you been eating enough?" Mama was in full worrier mode, leaning down and holding me by the shoulders. There would be no stopping her now. I wish there were, my right shoulder was still a little sore from the fucking Haunter lick there, and the scars on my left arm hurt when pressure was put on them. So her holding me like that? Bit uncomfortable.

"Yes Mama, I've been eating. I just haven't spent much time out in the sun, and I've been exercising a lot." Why was acting normal so hard? Not squirming in her grasp was getting harder by the second. At least withdrawal wasn't due to really set in for a few hours yet. Fuck. Why had I come so early in the day? They'd expect me to stay the night at least. This may have been a mistake, and yet, feeling the warmth of my mother's hands on me, the mere memory of the hug we'd gotten when we got here… I don't think I could bring myself to regret coming. Fuck. I was so fucking fucked.

"Have you had breakfast yet? We were just about to start when this one," She gestured to Gardemom, "Teleported us out here."

"I could eat."

More hugs were had when Dehlia, Daisy, and father got their turn at greeting me, and we chatted on our way to the kitchen. Father felt strange, like he was trying to keep his emotions in check, and I really didn't know what to make of that. He spoke and his question gave me an idea of what may be up with him.

"So, Azula," Twitch. "You captured fourteen Haunters and kept three of them for your team, you even labeled one of them as dangerous. What's the story behind that?"

Fuck. Poker face, don't fail me now.

"We heard about a Haunter swarm around the area and well, we wanted a Gengar for our team. We found it and captured the whole group. Nothing too special about it. The dangerous one was kind of crazy and ate anything it could find. Honestly, capturing it was a public service, that thing was a killer."

I could feel the concern from everyone when I said that. Kind of killed the mood. Mom chimed in, trying to recover the situation, "But you're okay, right, baby?"

"Of course, I'm okay, nothing I couldn't handle."

"Hm. Yes, of course." Father was looking at me and I had a feeling I'd made a wrong move somewhere. I was just glad no one was paying attention to his weird behavior. Yay for being the center of attention. "You've evolved two of the Haunters since, as well as the dangerous one. You've made some interesting roster moves, are you sure you should be using such a dangerous pokemon in your main team?"

"Well, to be honest, I took Mai and Ty Lee, those were my first Gengars, off of my combat roster and and switched them to helper pokemon so I could have them as bodyguards. They live in my shadow now." That got me raised eyebrows. "What? Mama was worried about people kidnapping me, let's see someone try it now that I have two very loyal, very deadly bodyguards that are always with me."

"That's why you're so cold!" Retired though she may be, but Mama was still the youngest Champion of Sinnoh and was as knowledgeable about pokemon as one might expect of someone like that. "And you've gotten used to that?"

"Don't worry Mama, it's fine. Honestly, I feel much better knowing they're there." Side glances everywhere. So I'm paranoid and my whole family can tell, what else is new? Bah. "Anyhow, Ozai, that's the third one, we had the other two hold him down while we remodeled his head. The rewiring is now pretty much completely set in stone."

Father continued to be all weird and enigmatic, but he seemed to be satisfied for now. I had a feeling I was screwed regardless. Fuck. Damn you phenomenal cosmic powers, why must you insist on making denial so difficult? That's pretty much how breakfast passed. With everyone but father asking about what I'd been up to, and I couldn't help strutting a bit and showing off the fact I was already at five badges. What? Our ego has needs, okay? Luna and I can only stroke it so much on our own and we'd spent the last month in a cave.

We adjourned from the kitchen to the living room when we were done eating, and apparently today was already going to be a no work gets done day because Daisy was visiting, us dropping by just added to it. I was crazy. I should have made excuses, should have tried to get away before symptoms started showing, but I couldn't tear myself away from my family. Not from any of our mothers, not from father, not from Dehlia, not even from Daisy who despite being absent from Pallet for most of the time we were here, had wormed herself into our hearts by virtue of being so fucking nice and sweet. Damn it all.

I didn't even notice the withdrawal crawling in until I reached for the cup of tea Dehlia had given us and it shook in my hands. My whole fucking body went cold when I realized what was happening. Fuck. Fucking fuck. I'd gotten so involved in relishing my family that I'd forgotten. If I was shaking, I was likely already paler than usual, sweating, had a runny nose, and watery eyes. Fuck. Emergency evac required. Be cool, just get up, hit the bathroom or the kitchen and take a pill there before someone notices how fucked up I am. How more fucked up than usual I am.

I made my excuses and headed for the kitchen, because that's where my damned bag was, seriously, "I forgot something in my bag, I'll be right back." Was the lamest, most suspicious exit ever, and now I needed an excuse for why and what I needed from my bag. Fuck me. I grabbed the bottle and shook out a pill before downing it dry.

"What are you doing?"

And just like that I was fairly certain I now knew what it felt like to have a fucking heart attack coupled with utter dread and terror. Daisy had followed behind me. She'd seen me, she knew. How the fuck was I going to deal with this? I liked Daisy, I couldn't just- just fuck with her head, not like I could do it without being super fucking obvious since Gardemom was super fucking close.

"D-Daisy, uh, what- um, just…" I could tell her the truth, or a very modified version of the truth. Right. Luna could help me sell this, make sure my reactions were just right. Not that I'd need much help, I was all out of chill at the moment. Well, in for a penny. I slumped a little. My right hand traced the scars hiding under my jacket's left sleeve. "I- I got hurt pretty bad not long ago. Still taking stuff from then."

"How long have you been taking those?" There was an edge to the question, like she already knew the answer. She'd noticed, somehow, had seen what was happening and correctly deduced the situation. Damned Oak genius genes.

"Too long."

"You need to stop."

"I know. I'm just getting some stuff in order before doing so." Awkward moment is awkward. "Don't tell anyone, please? They'd just worry, and Mama… I'll be okay, yeah? I have a plan in place. Luna and my Gengars will help."

She looked conflicted, and heartbroken, and so many other things I couldn't quite grasp through her psychic defenses. Finally, she settled on acceptance, and took a pokeball from a pocket, releasing a Chancey between us.

"Alright. I'll keep quiet for now, but I want you to call me regularly. You have my number. If you don't, I'll tell grandfather." She turned to her Chansey, "Lucky-tchi, I want you to go with Azula, okay? She's sick, so I need you to take care of her and make sure she's healthy, please?"

"Chansey!" Tender ball of love and affection that she was, Lucky-tchi went straight to checking up on me. "Chansey, chansey!"

"I don't need to eat more."

"And you'll do what she says, or else."

"But I suppose I don't really need an excuse to eat more…" I did not like being pushed around, but if there was anyone I was willing to forgive it from, especially after she was extending me so much trust, it was Daisy. "Thank you."

I couldn't help a squeak when she power walked over to me and gave me a tight hug. There was a story here, a reason for acting as she was. I wasn't sure I ever wanted to know, it felt like it could only be a sad story. Still, I hugged her back. 


	31. The Path 17

I wasn't sure why Daisy was running interference for me, but I was grateful. She was doing her best to keep our mothers from focusing too hard on me, something a tad necessary because our already inadequate social skills were even less useful while high on painkillers. Pretty sure they all noticed something was different, but Daisy was doing an excellent job of keeping the center of attention, so I might manage to skate by on my, uh, issues, for now. I needed to get her something really nice. Like, really, really nice.

Still, I managed to keep enjoying the company of my family, listening to Daisy talk about her forays into the wide fields of Pokemon research, to our mothers talk about what they'd been up to, and to father comment when asked to. We had lunch, and I had to make an effort, helped by Luna and Daisy pushing me, to eat everything in my plate. It seemed I may have actually not been eating well during the past month and a half. Somehow we hadn't even noticed I stopped eating as much. Damn it all.

Guess Lucky-tchi had it right. Ugh. I felt like I was going to burst, I couldn't imagine eating so much two or three times a day. At least now I had an excuse to nap and sleep off the majority of the pill's effects. I curled up against Mama in one of the living room couches and before long I fell asleep. I could feel Mama's presence beside me, blunting the worst of the nightmares, keeping the truly bad ones at bay, soothing the rest of them until they weren't as bad as they usually were. It was the best sleep I'd had in weeks. I woke up when the nightmares spiked, heart racing, and found that Mama wasn't next to me anymore, but I did have a pile of blankets on top of me now. I smiled. It wouldn't help the cold at all, Mama herself helped so much more, but the thought behind it was nice.

I crawled out from under the blankets and saw Daisy reading on one of the couches. She noticed my wakefulness and directed a smile my way.

"Where's everyone?" Luna wasn't with me, which just felt so weird. I could feel her a little bit in the distance, heading our way at a sedate pace that picked up when she felt my mind wake up.

"They went to get some take out for dinner. No one felt like cooking."

We waited a few minutes and then Luna skipped into the room and jumped up to sit on me. Much better. My arms wrapped around her and hugged her to me. Information passed between us at a blistering speed. Our parents had noticed my nightmares, but Luna had kept them from waking me, feeling they weren't as bad as the usually were and correctly assuming I'd rather some light nightmares in exchange for rest, than being woken up. Well, fuck. Father had continued to feel suspicious of us, but in general I'd slept through a very nice homey atmosphere where everyone enjoyed each other's presence. Good. Our mothers deserved to be happy.

Dinner was a quiet affair, though we did talk about my encounter with Gary in Vermillion, even if there wasn't much to it when I took out all the parts that had anything to do with the Haunter swarm incident. Eventually we made our excuses and went to our room. We were leaving for Cinnabar right after breakfast, and eating so much food for dinner made me sleepy. I was about to turn in, though Luna wanted to stay up for a little longer watching TV, when there was a knock at our door. Odd.

"Yeah?"

"Azula, may I come in?" Father was at our door. Well, guess we were about to find out what his weird behavior was all about. An effort of will had the door opening, and father took that as invitation and walked in, closing the door behind him. His gaze went directly to my right shoulder, then to my left arm, and I swear I could see him go grayer in that very instant. Shit. I wasn't wearing my jacket, and my pjs were strappy. My scars and the half faded lick marks were on full display. He barely made it to my bed before falling to his knees and grabbed my arm. "So it was you. I'd hoped… but really, who else could it have been? When the Haunters came in I was a bit worried, but then I heard the news and with you in the area… How many redheads with red eyes could there be in the world, much less in one place?"

I winced. Father was distraught, heartbroken, terrified, so many things. This was why I'd hoped they'd never find out. It hurt to see father like this, and I could only imagine how learning of my injuries would affect our mothers. I think I would rather rip out my own soul than ever expose them to even a fraction of this pain. Also his grip was kind of strong and right over a few of the scars, so that hurt.

"I didn't want you to worry, to feel like this. There wasn't anything left to be done, and we survived."

"How?" He was desperate for reassurance, even knowing I was sitting before him alive and relatively well.

"Fuck you, that's how." It slipped out. I couldn't help it, I really couldn't. I felt a little bad, but the bloom of incredulity from him was gratifying. He couldn't worry too much if he was busy being angry at me. Excellent. Ish. Kinda. Better than nothing, at least. "Does it matter? I'm here, that's what should matter."

His grip got tighter, and fucking oww that was going to leave a bruise. I must have made a face because he let go like he'd been burned, but still I rubbed the area to try and get the feeling out.

"I'm sorry." And now he's back to feeling bad. Damn it.

"It's fine. Kinda. Just forget about everything. It doesn't change anything, especially now that I have three Gengars protecting me at all times."

"How can I let you go back out knowing you came this close to dying?" He'd grabbed me again, this time by the shoulders. What is it with people grabbing me? Is it because I'm small? Fucking ugh. "I couldn't live with myself if I let you go back and something more happened to you."

And there was the other reason my mothers would never find out about this, regardless of what we needed to do to keep them in the dark. We would break their heart so badly, so very badly. We couldn't allow that, couldn't let anyone force us to do that, even if it meant breaking my father's heart instead.

I was so cold, the bites were hurting again, and I couldn't stop the sudden explosion of memories and nightmares that flooded my mind. I could feel Luna trying to bleed off the emotions, push down the memories, dispel the nightmares, but there was no point. We'd avoided looking at our damaged soul, but we knew what we'd find if we did, injuries like mine… They weren't meant to be survived.

"Let us?" We could take a guess at what our face looked like, our voice was flat, cold, contemptuous. "There is nothing you could do to stop us from doing as we wished, if we didn't wish to be stopped. You could try, and you would fail."

"I could pull your credentials, get your accounts frozen." He was desperate, grasping at any measure of control he could reach, but it would avail him nothing.

"And we would still leave. All you'd manage is to mildly inconvenience us and earn our enmity. I am Red Azula, little details will not be enough to keep us from our goals."

"I could tell your mothers." His voice was weak, and I knew that in his mind he had already given up. There were tears in his eyes already, and he only knew of the Haunter attack. I could only imagine how he'd react if he ever found out about the rest.

"I have never known you to be a cruel man, father, you know they could not stop me any more than you could, that I would still leave, and in the end all you'd have accomplished is to cause them unnecessary suffering."

"You aren't well Azula." Twitch. "You just need to get better, then you could continue your journey."

"I was well enough to leave the first time. I am well enough to leave again."

"Okay." Our hearts clenched at the pain in his voice, of how much it'd cost him to say that one word, but we had won, and tomorrow we would leave to continue our challenge. He left, slumped, a man defeated, broken. Hopefully one day he would forgive us. I got under the covers, and Luna moved close, stroking my hair. More nightmares. Hopefully we'd manage to fix that one day.


	32. The Path 18

Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully. We hoped for so much. We had an idea for getting to Cinnabar faster than a boat would get us there, which would leave us with more time to get our last two badges, which we'd have to do in Johto, because Giovanni's Gym would still be closed at this time of year, and the future was very firmly saying to not go to Saffron yet. This left us in a bit of a time crunch if we wanted to get our last two badges before detoxing. Thus the need for a new absolutely crazy idea. I couldn't fly at speed with just telekinesis quite yet, but both Luna and I could levitate my body indefinitely, then all I needed to do was add thrust.

I had to admit, I had a bit of one of my unhinged cackles when we first came up with the idea. It would be grand. We got up for breakfast and enjoyed a few last couple of hours with our mothers. Father was still reeling from last night, probably hadn't slept much if the bags under his eyes were anything to go by, but he still walked up to us and hugged us tight for a long time. A couple tears slipped out between us, him probably from having his heart ripped out, and us from ripping it out.

"I'm sorry." I said into his shirt. "I'm so sorry, but we have to do this."

He just hugged us harder to him and I felt him shudder against me.

"I love you Azula. Please be careful."

He left for his lab, we _Saw_ him drink himself unconscious before afternoon, over and over, day after day, and we felt like the horrible bitches we were. Fuck. Fucking fuck. But... we didn't need to let that happen, did we? With our new idea we had enough extra time to try and mitigate the damage from what we'd done and still make the deadline. Thanks future sight. Right then, best moment to intervene… Ah, yes, excellent. I waited a few minutes, idly eating a slice of buttered toast, before following after my father. We got there just in time to watch him down a shot of some amber liquor and pour himself another.

We sat down beside him and watched him just about jump out of his seat. Ninja soul snacks came with stealth mode and we fucking loved it. A glass floated its way over from the table where he kept them, and the bottle poured some of the liquor into it, before floating it way over to us. We added a gesture to the whole thing purely for effect. Showmanship was important here. Luna took a sip, and I downed the rest, coughing a little as it burned its way down my throat. Right, this body wasn't used to drinking hard liquor. I'd forgotten. Still, fucking delicious whisky, like, really good whisky. Damn.

Father had watched the whole thing happen with the most incredulous look on his face, practically screaming the feeling as well.

"We're so drinking together when I'm old enough."

Say what you will about us, but we had a talent for fucking with people's heads without even using psychic powers. Father was befuddled. Then again he probably thought I was just crazy. He was probably right. Okay, so he was totally right, but he didn't have look so concerned or make what he thought of my mental health so obvious.

"Still, you should probably not be doing this. We _Saw_ where you were headed with this if we didn't intervene, we didn't like it, and we're sure neither you or our family would like it any better. So this is us trying to avert some of the consequences of last night. Don't go down this path, father, it doesn't end well."

I hugged him and he returned it.

"Why?" We gave him a look like we thought he was the biggest idiot ever.

"Why wouldn't we? You're my father, and despite whatever else we may do, we care about you."

We left him in his lab, thinking heavy thought, and had a late breakfast with our mothers, before heading out. We dropped by Dehlia's restaurant to ask her to keep an eye on father, just in case. Not stacking the deck is for losers, after all. We told her about catching him drinking and said that maybe he needed someone to drag his worries out of him. Hopefully things would turn out fine. I couldn't seem to _See_ what was going to come from this. Who'd have thought that messing with the future made it hard to see what would come from your actions? Ah well, the die is cast, not much I could do about it anymore.

We reached the beach and found it empty. That was good, no one to see us do what we were about to. Luna reached out with her power, taking us high up in the sky, and we beheld a breathtaking view. Eternity lay ahead of us, and beyond. I gathered power, shaping it, trying to be as efficient as possible, to produce as much thrust as possible with the least energy wasted, and then, once I had the balance set in my mind, I pointed my arms back, mimicking the Azula I saw in a TV show a lifetime ago. I leant forward, azure flames bursting from my closed fists, then were were rocketing forward, faster and faster, until we had to spare some thought and power to create a shield in front of us to protect us from friction and anything we might run into.

We felt alive. The cold dropped away, the clumsiness, the fear, the memories, the nightmares, the pain, it all fell away in the face of the joy of flying. More power saw our speed increase even more. Islands popped into view and fell away in the blink of an eye, we felt the city a minute or so before it popped into view, and stopped feeding as much power into the flames. We still overshot Cinnabar by a bit, but it was short enough that we could get to the island with just telekinesis and maybe not attract so much attention.

We let our senses and Gengars out, looking for a spot to land where no one was watching. We found one and used Mai as a homing beacon to teleport there. Now all that was left was to find the Gym and wait for Blaine to come. A two day boat trip in one hour or so. We needed to clock our speed, because that was ridiculous. A couple questions here and there and we were walking towards the volcano in the distance. Apparently it was hard to miss Blaine's inn since it was the only thing in the general area. We got there and found the old man dressed in a hippy costume for some reason. People were fucking weird.

"Ah! A pretty young lady comes to my inn-"

"No, I come to your Gym, for your badge, but this seemed faster than waiting for you to show up over there."

"Ah. I'm curious how you found out about me." He took off the wig and glasses he was wearing, and damn, dude looked old as hell without the wig. I simply raised an eyebrow at him. "But I sense you're not going to tell me."

"You sense right. Shall we? We're in a hurry, you see, need to get to Johto for our last two badges after we win yours." He was amused by my confidence, but we could feel it wasn't malicious or anything like that, he felt invigorated at seeing the energy and enthusiasm of youth. It actually made us kind of like him quite a bit. Dude, like Surge, was just a genuinely good guy with his eyes to the future.

"Nicely done, little lady. It's not often you hear of a trainer as young as you with a single badge, much less five. Very well, we shall do battle! Follow me."

We were excited. Blaine was one of the first truly strong Gym Leaders, Giovanni and Sabrina were the only two others. Maybe Koga could have been, but Koga hadn't been there. Luna could stromp her way through anything he sent out, but Starmie, we still needed to find a name for it, and Ozai would have a good fight ahead of them.

We arrived at the entrance to his volcano arena, and we separated so he could enter from the other side. A short walk later and we were standing in the kind of sweltering heat that can only be achieved by molten fucking lava at the bottom of the arena. It was magnificent. Yes. This was the kind of fight we lived for. Blaine entered from his side, and Ozai extended my shadow until he could rise from the floor of the arena.

He was a sight to behold. The average Gengar was taller than me, standing at a modest 4'11", Mai and Ty Lee stood at a very tall 5'7" and 5'9". Ozai was gigantic. We hadn't measured him, we hadn't measured the other two either, but they were the same height as Mom and Mama, but I was pretty sure he was around over seven feet tall and as horrifying as you'd expect from a Gengar that had evolved from the kind of Haunter he'd been. Fucker looked like he'd walked straight out of a Lovecraft book. Hands with claws that looked like they would have belonged more on a Sandslash or Weavile, faces coming in and out of focus in swirls of gas on the surface of his body, teeth like needles and sharp as hell, and just generally disturbing shapes that looked like they were trying to burst out of his body. We were so proud of him.

We could see Blaine's what the utter fuck look clearly from where we were standing. Ghosts were rare enough, so it was probably not often that he even saw a Gengar, much less the abomination of nature that was mine. Then he smiled, and it was the smile of a hungry wolf about to have the meal of his life. He put away the pokeball he'd been holding and took out a different one from compartment in the wall beside him. Good. Yes.

"We'll do a three pokemon battle, since I saw you only carry four with you."

"Go, Charizard." Out of the pokeball came a true dragon. Oh, sure, it didn't have the actual typing unless it Mega Evolved, but oh, it was taller than Ozai and riddled with battle scars. Just like Ozai was the pinnacle of of his species, this Charizard was likely the strongest in the whole region, maybe the whole continent. Yes. It roared, and the volume shook loose stone from the walls. Ozai laughed and it was a thing of nightmares, a chorus of different voices causing a discordant, hair raising cacophony. We couldn't help the unhinged cackling. This would be a fight to remember.

We didn't even need to give out orders. These were monster made for battle. They knew what to do. Ozai blurred forward, taking a swipe at the Charizard, who ducked under the swing and spat a ball of fire into my ghost's face. Ozai disappeared and reappeared behind the Charizard, slamming a shadow ball in between its wings, or trying to. The flame pokemon spun around at a speed that shouldn't have been possible for his size and caught the ball of negative energy with his hands. It was a testament to his might that he managed it, given that the ball still pushed him backwards a couple steps, before he threw it to the side where it detonated against the wall.

Ozai was momentarily surprised, long enough that the Charizard managed to land a Fire Blast in his face. When the explosion of fire subsided, Charizard was alone on the field, before Ozai rose up behind him and launched a Psychic at the Charizard. He tried to dodge but wasn't fast enough, the Psychic detonated with a blast reminiscent of our naval artillery strike Psychics, crushing it's right wing and dragging a roar of pain from the dragon. A reflexive sweep of his tail launched Ozai away, giving Charizard breathing room to recover and turn to face my ghost, spitting another Fire Blast in the act of turning. Ozai wasn't there anymore, and the Fire Blast was heading straight at us.

Ugh. How did people who weren't us avoid dying on accident from stray attacks in pokemon battles? We pumped as much power as we could into a shield covering us, enough that it actually bled into the visible spectrum from how quickly we formed it. The Fire Blast hit with decent strength, but failed to penetrate. We barely missed a couple seconds of the fight, and yet when we could see again and weren't focused on not burning to death horribly, Ozai had taken a bite out of the Charizard at the shoulder, but Charizard had somehow managed to set him on fire.

How even? Didn't matter, we supposed, but let us say, being on fire only made the fucking thing even more disturbing, both in appearance and the sheer amount of what the fuck from his screams of pain. A command had Ozai disappear for a few seconds and reappear, the fire out without oxygen to burn wherever it was my ghosts went when they did ghost bullshit, but he was starting to look worse for wear.

We ordered Ozai to harry the Charizard's wounded side and to go for the eyes. It was a nasty tactic that most avoided despite the fact that it was healable if attended to in a timely manner. Mostly because it still took a couple days to heal even with the medical technology of this world, days during which the pokemon had to be taken out of combat rosters while it healed. Ozai appeared upside down right in front of Charizard, slashing for its eyes, missing one of them when it janked its head back. Perfect. It was now blind in one eye.

The fight didn't last long after that. A disadvantage that big against a pokemon as nasty as a Gengar? Ozai kept popping up in it's blind side and landing pretty solid hits, while the Charizard couldn't retaliate effectively. We'd figured this fight would end with a bang, given the quality of monsters were using, but in retrospect it made more sense that they were capable tanking hit after hit from attacks that would devastate lesser pokemon. In the end, Blaine recalled his Charizard.

"Hahahaha. I haven't had a fight like that in ages. Excellent, excellent. You're going places, Little Red." He pulled a second pokeball from somewhere on his person, instead of the other pokeball in the wall compartment. "Go, Ninetales. Flamethrower!"

The Ninetales was too fast for Ozai's size, and the Charizard had done too much damage. He went down under a barrage of Flamethrower after managing to land a glancing blow on the Ninetales with a Shadow Ball. That was fine, Ozai had done his job. We weren't sure Starmie could have handled that Charizard, and we were so not okay with not fighting that thing. That had been Champion level, old and powerful, experienced. A peak monster at the peak of its power and experience. A perfect experience for the Champions To Be to face. We were dying to see what the last pokeball was.


	33. The Path 19

Ninetales do not do well against strong psychics. See, Ninetales are fragile and not spectacularly strong or fast. They are very much setup pokemon, requiring time to build up their illusory and status effect bullshit while attacking from concealment and through illusions. So when you put a pokemon like that, using illusions not aimed specifically at powerful psychics who don't need their eyes to see you? Yeah, doesn't work. Like, at all. That Ninetales would have needed to be the god of all Ninetales to snare Starmie, Luna, and I in an illusion at the same time. It was far from that.

Oh sure, Starmie couldn't see past the illusions being thrown at it, but then we simply slaved it's senses to ours and Starmie didn't need to see past the illusions to aim, it just used our sense of where the Ninetales was and blind fired. I still had no fucking clue where the water for water attacks came from though, but sure, whatever. Two Hydro Pumps later and Blaine was recalling the horribly outmatched kitsune.

That's when he went for the second pokeball in the little wall compartment. We could feel our heartbeat speed up, hell we could almost hear the classic pokemon battle theme from my past life. Yes. This was what we lived for. The thrill of battle. Full on mind meld ready. We were going to need every edge we could eke out.

"Go, Magmortar! Fire Blast!"

It was another magnificent beast of a pokemon, six feet tall and massive. Yes, Blaine definitely deserved to be a Gym Leader. Luna hopped out from my jacket, positioning herself to my right. For this fight we would need every advantage, so we would have a second point of view from a different vantage point, even if the difference from mine was minute. All three of our brains would need as much sensory information as we could manage to acquire. I let the future flow into our mind fully, Luna and Starmie helping process the data into something useful.

The Magmortar spit out an enormous Fire Blast, but Starmie had already moved. It spit out a Hydro Pump and when the Magmortar dodged, it was into the path of the attack. It hammered her back a step, before it spit out a plume of lava through the torrent of water. It caused an explosion of steam, which was to my advantage, if the damned thing couldn't see it couldn't aim, but the solidified spike of lava ripped off a chunk of flesh from one of Starmie's points. It was already moving, spinning above the arena while regenerating the damage. We'd chosen this Starmie not because it was stupidly powerful, though it was powerful. No, we'd chosen it because it had staying power, and having a chunk ripped off? Didn't even slow it down. Bit of a double edged sword though, feeling that happen when mind linked? Not fun.

This was going to be a long one.

Hydro Pump after Hydro Pump rained down on the Magmortar, and it alternated between spitting Lava Plumes and Fire Blasts at Starmie. It was barely keeping ahead of the attacks, turning on a dime, predicting dodges and attack trajectories, and yet it was still getting burns and pieces ripped off in exchange for trading damage. We'd wear the fucker down if we had to fight for an hour. At some point the damned thing started flinging Psychics interspersed between the lava and fire, and the hits started piling up faster. So we did the same. After all, what's the point of training for bullet hell spam if you don't make use of it?

Fucking fight looked like the sickest goddamned fucking rave ever. Then we took it to the next level and added Dazzling Gleams and Thunderbolts into the mix, because fuck it, why not throw everything at the wall and see what sticks? Maybe the Magmortar would get paralysed and we'd have the advantage. Starmie, the one pokemon rave. Quantity had a quality all its own. Twenty five minutes later and I couldn't believe the Magmortar was still going strong. What the utter fuck did Blaine feed that thing?

We noticed the beginning of the end when Starmie's gem flickered, Blaine must have noticed as well, because from one moment to the next he'd whistled and the Magmortar switched from defense to offense in an instant. Then there was a huge fucking mountain of burning muscle flying through the air and tackling Starmie out of the air and into the arena floor. Credit where it's due, the fucking star kept shooting right up until we recalled it and the Magmortar punched a hole through the spot it'd been.

Hahahahahaha. We couldn't believe it. We were down to Luna, completely at a disadvantage, and yet we couldn't stop laughing. My sister Teleported onto the field, letting loose the deadliest Psychic we'd ever crafted and raising a Protect to block the opening Lava Plume. This was the Psychic we hadn't dared use against our mothers, hadn't needed to use against anyone else. This wasn't the shaped shield breaking Psychic that'd let us land our first hit against Gardemom. This wasn't the pinpoint bone shattering Psychic that'd broken Flint's Infernape. This wasn't the charged Psychic that'd done serious internal damage to our Snorlaxes. This Psychic concentrated all the considerable energy of the attack into an ultra thin plane. It'd be more accurate to call them psychic blades than blows.

It hit with a spray of boiling blood as it opened a cut along Magmortar's chest, and then the battle was on. Bone breaking Psychics, bladed Psychics, the original, we fired them all. It was our move, and we were the masters. Luna was faster than Starmie, and she was giving the Magmortar a death of a thousand cuts. Thing wouldn't stop though, and she didn't slow down either. She even managed to tag Luna with a Psychic, but Luna was an old hand at getting hit by those and she was firmly back on the arena floor nearly in the same instant she was hit. Gardemom hit harder than that, bitch.

We started to see victory when the Magmortar switched to raising Protects to block attacks instead of full on tanking them like before. It almost cost us the fight. We got ahead of ourselves. We went too aggressive too early, and a Fire Blast detonated close enough to rag doll Luna through the air, stunned from the concussive force and heat of the blast. It threw her on an arc that would have landed her in the lava beneath the arena if she hadn't regained focus fast enough to Teleport back and resume our attack runs. We were cold, for a single frozen instant we'd known true fear. For a single moment we understood our father. Then the moment passed. We had no use for fear, no use for doubt, no use for regret. We would fight, and we would win, simple as that, it was the truth of our selves, carved into our very souls.

The Psychics went out faster, stronger, and more focused now. Galvanized by our mistake. We would not lose. The cuts were deeper, bones were finally breaking, and a final Psychic slammed the Magmortar out of the arena and bounced it off the volcano wall. Blaine recalled it before it fell into the lava, mostly because the fall was pretty large and even if Magmortar in general thought lava was really quite nice to lay on, the fall would probably hurt it further than it already was. We were breathing hard, and I had a migraine the likes I hadn't felt since waking up after getting mauled by Haunters.

It might have been a toss up as to which one of us was in worse shape. We were pretty sure we'd come close to giving me an aneurysm from abusing precognition and future sight so much and for so long. Brains weren't meant to handle that much information. Huh, I had a nosebleed. And my eyes were bloodshot and bleeding. Clearly we needed to step up my endurance training.

We'd won though.

Haha.

Hahahahahaha.

Hahahahahahahahaha

We'd faced two Champion pokemon and won. I couldn't really hear Blaine over the sound of rushing blood in my ears and unhinged laughter, but Luna could. He was amazed, thoroughly pleased and impressed, and then terribly worried when he noticed all the blood and my apparent unresponsiveness, and, you know, the crazy laughter. Then Luna was by my side, bleeding off the excess power still burning through my mind. She gave me a pill and a half, and then released Starmie to wash away the blood. By the time Blaine made it to us I was much more presentable, though Luna said I still looked terrible. The price of ambition, paid in blood, this time with our own.

Our path was going to end up permanently stained red from so much blood. Fitting, we supposed.


	34. The Path 20

Blaine was initially frantic, but we managed to calm him down. Our social skills may be nonexistent, but we were pretty good at manipulating people into agreeing with us. In the end he gave us our Volcano Badge, and then we walked back to his inn, where he logged the battle manually into the League network. We couldn't help grinning at seeing the Champion designation on the Charizard and Magmortar we'd beaten. Our records would be unsealed for the Conference, and we couldn't help but wonder what people would think when they saw that.

We left shortly afterwards, though not before Blaine extracted a promise from us to come back one day and have a rematch. Fucking definitely. Ozai and Starmie could always benefit from more experience fighting at the Champion level. We could have stayed and explored Cinnabar, but honestly, I felt like my brain was ready to leak out through my ears, and the extra dose of painkillers Luna had given me felt absolutely delicious. We'd worked hard, hadn't we? We'd surpassed all of our limits, beaten two monsters that likely could take on legendaries and win, we could take a little break to enjoy the fuzzy warmth and euphoria of the pills and sleep a whole fucking day.

Luna Teleported us directly to our room. She helped me undress and put on my sleepwear, because standing and hand-eye coordination was hard, and then we fell into bed. We don't know how long we spent there, just enjoying the feelings inside of me, but eventually we drifted off to sleep.

An unknown amount of time later I felt someone shaking me. Ow. Why was I awake? Why couldn't I just keep sleeping and not feel so utterly and completely terrible? Fucking everything hurt, especially my head, and my stomach felt like it was going to rebel any second now. And of course, I was fucking freezing. I groaned. Where was Luna? Ah. Kitchen, food, waiting. Well then, that's why I loved my sister. Apparently I'd slept a whole day again.

"You look terrible, Azula" Daisy. She was sitting at the head of my bed near my head. Well, better than one of our mothers. I needed to get long sleeved sleepwear for home. Hiding the scars was too hard with what I had on right now. "And you didn't call, though from what Luna said, you were too busy being asleep, so I'll let it pass. Where's Lucky-tchii?"

Speaking was too hard, so I use my phenomenal cosmic powers to tell my niece her Chancey was in my jacket.

"Cute. Where's your jacket?"

Fucked if I knew, ask Luna, she was the one who undressed me. I barely remembered what the fuck happened after Luna rang out Blaine's Magmortar in a shower of blood accompanied by a symphony of snapping bones.

"Really? What the hell did you do? No, you know what, I'll wait until you're better. It feels so weird when you push information into my head."

Suit yourself then.

"Stop that."

Oak baiting, truly a noble calling. Laughter, or at least amusement, was definitely the best medicine. I was shivering, which was weird, a symptom that hadn't happened before. Maybe because this was the longest I'd gone without a pill? Yeah, probably.

"You're such a brat Azula." She was stroking my hair now, and I couldn't help leaning into her touch. We needed to capture a cutesy huggable pokemon so we wouldn't be so touch starved all the time. "You have a fever. As soon as Luna gets back Lucky-tchii is checking you over."

That was fine. I scooted up to her and cuddled up. I needed a soul near me right the fuck now. Well, a soul that didn't suck up heat like my Gengars did.

"So clingy too."

Clingy, am I? That sounded like a challenge. Next thing she knew I was sitting on her lap and the blankets had wrapped themselves around us. Ow. My everything. Worth it though. The sheer incredulity radiating from Daisy was delicious, and I'd have paid a lot of money to have had a camera pointed at her when I did it.

"Really? Really? Brat." She still hugged me to her though. Acting all indignant and stuff, hah, she was a total softie. I took some time to draw information from Luna about what had happened while I was asleep. She'd woken up about twelve hours after we'd gotten home, very early in the morning, and tidied up the room. She'd ordered two more jackets from the seamstress we used here in Pallet, because getting the bloodstains out of the one we'd worn to fight Blaine would be too much of a pain, and we hadn't replaced the one the Haunters had destroyed.

Then she'd met Daisy in the kitchen when she'd gone to get breakfast and my niece had taken it upon herself to look after my sleeping body. Huh. What about our mothers? Really Luna? Just came back to our room and watched TV all day? Ah. Didn't want them finding us when we were so obviously hurt and my scars were on show. Right. Of course. That's why you're the less mentally questionable one of the two us Small Big Sis

No wonder Daisy hadn't freaked out about bloodstained clothes though, admittedly I hadn't even thought about it until Luna had commented on it, but it was a good move. A spare thought went to grabbing Lucky-tchii's pokeball from where Luna had shoved the jacket under the bed, and dropped it beside us.

"That Lucky-tchii's?"

I nodded against her chest. She disentangled an arm from the mess of blankets around us and let out her pink blob of love and huggableness. Seriously, Chancey were great pokemon.

"Chancey!"

Nuhuh. You don't get to admonish me for not letting you give me a check up while I was asleep. I literally couldn't have done anything about it.

"Chancey!"

Yes, I did eat more. No, I haven't eaten recently. Luna's on her way with food.

"Chancey!"

I am so not letting go of Daisy or coming out from this blanket tangle until there's something for me to drink.

"Chancey!"

And then I had an exasperated blob of pink all over Daisy and I, checking my temperature, looking into my eyes, ears, up my nose, poking my cheek, and seriously what the fuck could she learn from poking my cheek? She checked my heartbeat and then listened to my breathing. No, seriously, Chancey were amazing pokemon, because then she declared that I was going through a nasty opiate withdrawal, fever included, and that I needed to eat and drink plenty of water. I was also to not use my phenomenal cosmic powers seriously for at least a couple of days or the migraine would continue. Apparently, we'd strained my brain and nervous system. Not too surprising, to be honest.

Well then, we'd just walk to Viridian and then do our impression of a rocket from there to New Bark Town, and then up to Blackthorn City. Yue would have so much fun wrecking some dragons with ice and fairy kitsune bullshit. Then we'd swing by Ecruteak City and hopefully ghost dude Gym Leader would have something fun for Ozai to fight against. First we had to talk to father though, I wanted a Torchic and a Bagon, and we had rare pokemon to trade for them, or money to buy them. Hopefully he would know where to go, or be capable of facilitating their acquisition directly.

Luna walked in, followed by a plate of floating sandwiches and four mugs of hot chocolate. She uncoiled the tangle of blankets, jumped up to sit on my lap, had one of the mugs follow her and then recoiled the blankets around us. Perfection. Marry me.

I got Looks from Daisy and Lucky-tchii. What?

I floated one of the mugs up to my lips and drank the glorious ambrosia that was chocolate. I cleared my throat and finally deigned to speak. It was a little scratchy, but that was fine, more chocolate would clear that right up.

"Thank you Daisy, and you too Lucky-tchii. You've trusted us so much, helped so much."

She hugged us harder for a bit.

"Love you too, brats. Kinda weird to see you back so quickly. What happened? Did you decide you needed more training time or something?"

Hah. I suppose it made sense from her point of view. The boats to Cinnabar took around a week to make a round trip, and then at least one day to challenge for the badge, plus whatever extra time we stayed there. A reasonable assumption to make when talking to anyone who wasn't us. We couldn't help the smug grin that spread across our faces. We reached for the badge case in our bag, floating it our way and opening to display my six badges, the Volcano Badge proudly on display after the Rainbow Badge.

"How the hell did you manage that? I know you've never been to Cinnabar, so you couldn't have teleported, and I know you two crazies, you'd never take a shortcut you couldn't do on your own… What did you do?"

"That's a secret. Suffice to say we got to Cinnabar about an hour after we left Pallet and then once we found Leader Blaine we had the best battle of our lives. We fought Blaine's Champion Charizard and Magmortar. It was perfection in battle form."

She looked like she had a headache now. Poor thing. She reached out of the blanket tangle took her floating mug of chocolate, and drank half the cup in a single pull.

"You must have either really impressed him or really pissed him off to have a Gym Leader like Blaine fight with one of his remaining Champions, much less both of them. I guess you must have either done both or just really impressed him if he gave you the badge after beating you."

"Beating us…?" What the fuck even gave her the impression we'd ever take a badge we didn't win in combat? Our utter bafflement and anger must have shown, because she quickly tried to explain herself.

"I mean, obviously you must have done something pretty big to get him to pull out the big guns, and there's no shame in losing to Champion pokemon, I mean, they're Champions! So it's okay to lose, and obviously if you got him to pull out Champions then I'm thinking you automatically qualify for a badge even if you lose. I know some Gym Leaders give out badges for far, far less."

"We didn't lose. We beat Blaine. Ozai took out his Charizard, Starmie took out one of his Ninetales and wore down his Magmortar a little, then Luna finished her off."

"What?"

We didn't get what was so hard to understand. Obviously Champion pokemon were more than exceptional, but she knew we were even further than that. We were the Champions To Be, Red Azula and Luna. Of course we'd won.

"But how? I know you're strong 'Zula, but, what?" Wait...

"Oh. You've never seen us fight Mama and Gardemom, have you? And no one besides Blaine has seen Ozai, or seen Starmie in action. Or Yue, though of course Yue would be completely wrong for Blaine's Gym."

"What does that matter?"

"Because if you had, you wouldn't be so surprised we'd won."

She still looked pretty sceptical. Fine then, we'd show her Ozai. We disentangled from the blankets and floated for the door. We'd show her. Us, lose. Hah. We had a destiny, losing before then was not something we would allow.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"To the Pokemon Center. Ozai got knocked around pretty bad in the fight so we need to get him healed before we can show you."

"The hell you are. You're not going going anywhere without eating."

I was afraid this would happen. I wasn't sure I could keep the sandwiches down if I ate them. I wasn't sure I could keep down a single bite. I hated it. So much. I was furious now, ready to go out and destroy anything in my path. I couldn't stand these fucking feelings. I was either always high or always in pain, always nauseous, always fucking bruised fucking everywhere because the pills made me even clumsier than the damned Haunter mauling had already made me.

"Azula!"

Ah. Luna sent me a memory of everything in the room shaking when rage caused my power to slip its leash. Well, that's embarrassing. Fuck it all, she already knows, she's already seen me take one. What difference does it make if she's here to see me take one again, now?

"I'm sorry Daisy."

"Sorry for what…"

I gestured towards my bag, mostly so my hand would be be ready to catch the pill, and a slight exertion of will later had one flying out and landing in my palm. I swallowed it and washed it down with hot chocolate. The bundle of feelings coming from Daisy when she saw this was… complex. Exceedingly so. So much pain and worry. She hated herself for not doing more, for not telling my mothers, or father, for not trying to stop me herself, but she was terrified out of her mind that if she pushed something bad would happen. Well. What a way to make me eat my thoughts. That's the difference it'd make if she saw me take one again, now.

Fuck. I was on roll with this hurting my family thing. At least this time I hadn't meant to do it on purpose. Didn't make it better, but at least I felt like less of a cunt about it than when we broke father's heart. What to do? Reassurance? Yes, yes, that was probably the best move.

We walked back to her, and I saw her eyes focus on my scarred left arm, and then the bruises and fuck. Now she looked like she was about to faint. We cupped her face with our hands, looking her in the eyes. We needed her to know how serious we were.

"We can feel what you feel, Daisy. You don't need to be so scared. We don't know what happened, but we can imagine, and we promise you I will quit. I hate it more than anything else I've ever hated in either life, so believe us when we say we have no intentions to go on any longer than necessary. We have the tools and the will we need to make it happen, all that's left is for the time to be right."

We hugged, and we're pretty sure she cried a little, but eventually the atmosphere relaxed. As soon as the nausea subsided, I ate two of the sandwiches at Lucky-tchii's urging. Then we put on a long sleeved shirt, changed into a skirt, and pulled Daisy to her feet, whereupon we browbeat her into coming with us to the Pokemon Center. We could have healed our pokemon with father's facilities, but we'd rather have an expert looking over our pokemon and Luna's body. We'd show her exactly why Blaine had faced us as equals, and why he'd lost. Well, part of it anyway. We didn't think there was anything we could do to show her exactly how ridiculously overpowered we were short of going all out against Gardemom.

The walk was short, and the Nurse Joy at the Center had our pokemon fully healed after ten minutes and gave Luna a clean bill of health. We Teleported back home to one of the open areas where father kept pokemon when out of their balls. We palmed Ozai's pokeball.

"Inside this lies the reason Blaine took us seriously. The reason he sent out one of his Champions as a test, to see if he'd found an opponent worthy of such a challenge. He did, he'd found us, after all."

"Come on Azula, it's a Gengar. I mean, yeah, Gengars are rare, and strong, but one isn't going to draw out a Champion pokemon on its own."

We didn't answer, it'd be easier to let our abomination against nature speak for himself, so we let him out, and then there was a 'miniature' eldritch abomination towering before us, laughing away with his fucked up laugh. Aw, my monster was still giddy about the fight. So cute. He sank down into my shadow, where he belonged. Ah, much better. Yes, the cold was worse and that was terrible, but I'd missed my third bodyguard.

"See why now?" We turned to Daisy and found her completely and utterly paralyzed with terror. "Daisy?"

She didn't respond. We shook her a little, she still didn't respond. Fuck, we'd broken our niece. Well, my unliving crime against nature had, but details. Heh. Well, now. If this was how the average trainer responded to meeting Ozai, the Conference was going to be a fucking walk in park. More of a fucking walk in the park.


	35. The Path 21

We got Daisy to her room so she could have a bit of a lay down while processing the sheer fucked upness of Ozai. Our mothers and father were pleasantly surprised to see us back home so quickly, but unlike Daisy, they knew our prowess, and were merely curious about how we'd managed to get there and back so quickly. Father was awkward around us. We'd been… horrible to him. Perhaps even ruined our relationship with him, especially if he ever learned, well, any one of our other secrets. Since they probably all lent credence to his arguments. Although we had a feeling the opiate dependence would be the worst received, which said something given that we could legitimately say we had perpetrated massacres, plural.

We were also going to completely ignore the possibility of our mothers ever finding out any of them, because we really didn't want to consider the possibility. We didn't want our mothers to ever suffer even a fraction of the pain father had. Not from finding out, and not from what had to happen if they tried to stop us before we'd fulfilled our destiny.

Hm. Maybe Team Rocket really was Necessary Collateral Damage. Shower thoughts were funny like that.

The water was deliciously hot, and it created the weirdest dichotomy within me. We felt the delicious heat of the water warming our bodies, and yet I felt the horrible cold of the Haunter licks deep within me, coming from somewhere far deeper than my body. One day we would look at my soul again, and we would find out what the cause was. We had our suspicions, but we couldn't bring ourselves to look. Not yet. We finished our shower, and got dressed, using one of our older jackets while we waited for our new ones to be finished. It was a little small, but it'd do for now. Luna had put in a rush order and the new ones would be ready later today. Time to find father.

He was in his primary lab, stood over a small silver rectangle and two small square devices on a tray. And he was drinking. We were not pleased.

"You really shouldn't be drinking."

We'd timed our comment for maximum effect. That is to say, we'd waited until he was taking a sip and he turned into a coughing sputtering mess. Good. He answered after a minute or two of coughing.

"Damnit Azula, stop doing that." He took a couple seconds to breathe and clear his throat. "And for your information, daughter, I'm celebrating a breakthrough in a project I've working on for the last year and a half. I felt like a couple drinks would be acceptable."

"Oh. Well, as long as you don't overdo it. We worry about you."

"You have a funny way of showing it." Ouch. Yeah, he was still upset about the other night. We'd have to work pretty hard to make it up to him. Hopefully he wasn't about to blow us off. "What do you want Azula?"

Cold.

"Okay. Fine. We wish to acquire two pokemon. We have a number of pokemon we'd be willing to trade in exchange. Purchasing them would also be acceptable. A Torchic and a Bagon."

"The Torchic should be easy enough, they're expensive, but you should have more than enough money to outright buy one off of Hoenn's starter program with your savings alone, and after beating six Gyms? The Bagon is problematic, but if you somehow have a Dratini I don't know about, it could be arranged fairly quickly through Lance's inter-region dragon research initiative."

"Order the Torchic and if possible reserve a Bagon. We can get the Dratini." More like we needed to finally get around to using Porygon to reset the ownership tags on the Game Corner pokeballs we'd looted from the Rockets. Thankfully, father had the equipment we'd need, and Porygon would let us bypass pesky things like security protocols and built in security locks. Normally we'd have to physically modify the pokeball to even manage, and we'd been more than ready to do that, but we'd forgotten father had access to a lot of shiny toys that would make this much easier. "We'll be back soon."

We walked to our room. This would be an interesting operation. The security in the laboratories that had the requisite machines was insane, especially since Mom had taken over as head of security. She'd even gone so far as to try to psychic proof the whole thing. She'd done an excellent job, honestly, and most psychic who tried to get it would end up caught in short order. Good thing we weren't most psychics, and good thing Mom had never managed to successfully keep either of us out, much less both of us working together. Add in ninja bullshit, AI bullshit, and ghost bullshit? Oh yeah. We could do this.

We turned our senses and found Processing Lab 3, the one we remembered had the least security and was least used. A combination of older equipment and being farthest from the compound's entrance. Cameras were identified, sensors tagged, and we were ready to disable all alarms at a moment's notice. We released Porygon and ordered it into the pokedex and from there into the internal network. A few less sensors to worry about this way.

Father really shouldn't have whitelisted our pokedex throughout the whole network the way he had. It was a security risk. Though we were supposed to be above reproach and not capable of doing or knowing half the shit we did. So it'd probably been a reasonable move, questionable mental health notwithstanding. Well, time to abuse those permissions by having Porygon spoof its way into places it shouldn't be. Communicating telepathically with a pokemon that was fully virtual was weird as fuck. Camera feeds were looped, all alarms were now rerouted to Porygon and ready to be intercepted. Sensor logs were ready to be wiped as well.

We Teleported in, and went directly to the the processing mainframe, placing one of the Dratini balls into the a slot in the machine. Porygon went right to resetting the ownership records and wiping all trainer data from the ball. Ten minutes later it was ready, and we put in the Larvitar ball, then Porygon's, Sneasel's and finally the second Dratini. A whole hour spent on this. Larvitar's ball had been a fucking mess that had taken nearly twenty minutes to clear. We really didn't want to know where the fuck it'd come from or how the Rockets had gotten it.

We wiped our fingerprints and Teleported out back to our rooms. Porygon cleared everything and extracted out to our pokedex and then to its ball. Mission fucking accomplished. We really felt like ninjas now. That was awesome. Maybe after becoming Champions we could pick up a hobby in corporate espionage or something. Then we Teleported to Vermillion and made sure our presence was logged at the Pokemon Center. We wasted an hour and Teleported back home, directly to father's primary lab, where he once again jumped at our sudden appearance.

"Father, a Dratini, as requested." I tossed him the pokeball underhand, and old as he was he still caught it no problem. He put it into a slot next to him. "How long will it take to have the pokemon transferred here?"

"Early tomorrow morning. By the time the orders go through the cross-region transfer network will be down for the night. Insert your pokedex there to authorize the funds for the Torchic and the transfer for the Dratini."

"Sure." The pokedex went in, beeped, and slid back out. Father looked at a screen next to him and hit a few keys.

"It's done. Come here before you leave tomorrow to pick them up."

We understood his brusqueness, but it still hurt to be treated that way. We left and walked to pick up our jackets, then came back to enjoy a family dinner. Okay, to enjoy our mothers, Daisy, and Dehlia's presence, while father was just sort of there. We went to sleep and and the next morning picked up the last two members of our Championship team. Our last two Gyms awaited us, then we'd register for the Conference and we'd start detoxing once we had all our ducks in a row. There was a feeling in the air. The future was starting to press down upon us again.

Something big was coming.


	36. The Path 22

We took off from the forests southwest of Viridian. We did it the same way we got to Cinnabar, with Luna handling lift while I handled thrust. At first we weren't sure how we were going to handle navigation, given this was a bit more than going south in a straight line until we hit the big island with lots of people. Then we smacked ourselves and just looked at our poketch. It was clearly not meant to handle the speeds we were going at, it glitched out regularly, but it was enough to more or less point us towards New Bark Town. Two hours and change later of flying and we touched down about three kilometers northeast from the town.

Then we smacked ourselves for being silly. It'd have been faster to go to Blackthorn City directly from Viridan than to come all the way down here to New Bark and then back up to Blackthorn. Ugh. Fine, whatever. We'd just take the time to visit Professor Elm's laboratories. Make the detour worth the time. We walked out into the fairly homey town, it was really quite similar to Pallet, which kinda made sense in a meta sort of way.

It tooks us about thirty minutes to get to the outskirts of the town, and then ten more to reach Professor Elm's labs. The lobby was really quite nice, very modern and with lots of informational posters about pokemon. The basics of what to do and not do if you wanted to survive as a trainer. It occurred to us we'd never actually seen the lobby for father's compound, given that we simply used the private entrances or teleported in directly. Something to do, maybe see if we could use that to start fixing our relationship with father. Yes, once we'd taken care of business we were definitely spending more time with everyone. We missed our mothers.

There was a tall, thin man with half-moon glasses, and a lab coat, he was reading a notepad, occasionally scribbling something in it. He looked up and saw us, a smile sprouting on his face.

"You must be Marina! Excellent, a little early, but that's fine. I must say, you seem much younger than your age would imply. Come, we'll get you your first pokemon and you can get started on your journey!"

I smiled. It felt weird. What the fuck, since when did smiling become something we did so little of it felt weird to do? Still, it seemed we'd walked in at just the perfect time to get a show. That was great. The name seemed pretty familiar too. They must be someone with a destiny we didn't fully remember. This had to be Professor Elm.

"Wrong person professor, we're just passing by on our way to Blackthorn and decided to visit such a famous lab. Though now that we know a new trainer is starting out we may just hang around, if that's okay with you."

"Ah, a visitor! My apologies. I'm Professor Elm, and here at my facilities we focus on studying pokemon evolution. I'm afraid I can't give you a tour at the moment, but if you wait until after the starting trainers coming in today leave, we can arrange something."

We shook hands.

"Pokemon Trainer Red."

"A pleasure. It's always good to see young trainers aiming high, although I would recommend starting with Falkner's Gym in Violet City. It's better for newer trainers."

"Thanks you for the advice, we'll take it into consideration."

"Hello? I'm here for my starter pokemon!"

A third voice, also female, rang out. She walked up to us. She was a bit older than us, though we didn't know how much, with blue hair and green eyes. And taller. I had this feeling people being taller than me was going to become a recurring thing. Damn you future sight, at least I had hope before.

"Ah, Marina, excellent. Come, come, the starter pokemon are this way."

We followed Professor Elm deeper into his compound, with Marina chatting all the way. She was… nice, very sweet and full of life. Hopefully she had a bright future ahead of her. Professor Elm gave her a pokedex too, which was good. When she stood before the pokeballs holding the three regional starters, she went with Totodile, and turned to us, an expectant look upon her face.

"Aren't you going to choose your own starter?"

"Ah, no. We just wanted to see someone get their first pokemon. It's such a special moment. Besides, big sis would probably get jealous if I were to choose another pokemon as a starter."

"Ralts." Luna poked her head out from my zipped up jacket.

"Yes, sis, I know no one compares to you."

"Has she been there this whole time?!"

"Sis can be very lazy." We all ignored her indignant cry of "Ralts!"

"Ah, a Ralts. You're very far from Hoenn." Professor Elm chimed in, looking fascinated by Luna. "Remarkable pokemon, truly."

"We're actually from Sinnoh, but we moved to Pallet Town a couple years ago."

"Oh, I know! We can have a pokemon battle! My Wani-Wani against your Ralts!"

"It wouldn't be fair to you, Luna and I have been together since I was born. She's actually older than me, but if you want, we recently got a new member for our team that would be perfect for a starting trainer."

"Alright, let's fight then. Go, Wani-Wani!" She was so energetic, she even did a little dance number when she told her Totodile to step forward. "Pokemon Trainer Marina challenges you to battle!"

We felt the future pushing us to go with our Torchic. We were loath to break our naming pattern for our pokemon, but my past life had always used a specific name for her Torchics, and we wanted to honor that. It was funny though, the name totally didn't fit.

"Pokemon Trainer Red accepts your challenge. Go, Zeus!" Our terribly misnamed Torchic came out of his pokeball, and did the cutest roar-chirp we'd ever heard. Holy fuck, that thing was hella cute. We did something we remembered from an old story and held out our hand to her. "After you, trainer."

"Water Gun!" Her Totodile spit out a very decent jet of water for a new starter. A mental command had Zeus dodge the attack, and it splashed against a barrier in front of us. "Again!"

This time Zeus was too slow on the dodge and got splashed back a few meters. A mental command had him jumping back to his feet and spitting a tight grouping of Embers at her Totodile.

"Dodge, Wani-Wani!" Unfortunately for her, my lack of a need for voiced commands gave us a speed advantage and the little balls of flame hit the Totodile full on. "Oh no, fight back with Bubble!"

We countered with more Embers. There was a simple joy in fighting a battle with no stakes. We didn't think Zeus could beat her Totodile even with our advantages, but we were certainly willing to try. They traded blows for a few minutes, before a Water Gun laid out Zeus again. The little guy had heart though, and spat out one last barrage of tiny fireballs that laid out Wani-Wani at the last second. Well. A double knockout. Better than we'd been expecting.

"Oh wow, that was amazing."

"Yes, very much so. You'll make a great trainer, we can feel it."

"Thank you!" She hugged me and then Luna, before running out. She'd been so warm, and we really wanted to follow after and keep hugging her. She was amazing. If only we weren't pressed for time we could maybe travel with her.

"Keep your eye on her professor, she'll go far."

Then she came running back in and gave us a slip of paper with a string of numbers on it. "I almost forgot, here's my pokegear number so we can talk later if you want to! I'd love to be friends with such a cutie, we'd look great together as pokemon idols!"

Then she ran out again. The fuck just happened?

"Yeah, okay. Uh, I'll see you later professor."

We needed breakfast. Yeah, food would help us process all of that. We found a diner after a few minutes of walking and we sat down to delicious greasy breakfast food. So, we needed to get a pokegear. Yes, definitely, we wanted to talk to Marina again, so we needed to buy a pokegear. That way we could call her without having to go to a city or town and find a terminal to use. We'd find a store that sold one, get it all set up, and then we'd continue on to Blackthorn City. It'd help with calling Daisy too and… yup, a quick look around our bag had yielded us Lucky-tchii's pokeball. Guess she wasn't giving up on that.


	37. The Path 23

Buying the pokegear took out a large chunk of change from our already significantly diminished account, but it was definitely worth it to keep in touch with Marina. Getting it set up was fairly easy for trainers, all we really needed to do was tie it to our Trainer ID and then an available number would be assigned. We'd call Daisy to test it out when we got to Blackthorn. Judging by the distances we'd traveled so far it was likely to take us about two to three hours to get there at our best speed.

We definitely needed to find some form of entertainment, as great as flying was, hour after hour of blurry scenery kind of got old. Hopefully podcasts existed already. Probably not well established yet, since smart devices weren't really a thing. Hm. Idea. Needed to make sure we stopped the Rockets at Silph Co. so we could snack on some of their scientists and then use their knowledge, my memories, and our phenomenal cosmic powers to make the first smart device.

We reached Blackthorn a little after noon, and got a room at the Pokemon Center there after getting our team looked over by the attending Nurse Joy. Now, to wreck the dragon Gym now or wait for tomorrow. Decisions, decisions. It not like there was much to do in the city if you weren't interested in the Dragon Den. Yeah, Gym time. We found it fairly quickly and an aide took us to the battle arena, where we found some random trainer walking out looking like he just got owned. Poor dude, but, well, get good scrub. We really should try to not be such huge cunts, but it was hard.

"Another challenger already? My, what a busy day. Alright then, this shall be a four pokemon match. My aide will register your ID." The woman who'd guided us her took my pokedex and scanned it with that nifty wireless device we'd seen a couple times before.

"Pokemon Trainer Red challenges Gym Leader Clair for the Rising Badge, choose your pokemon."

We were distracted. She looked a lot like Marina. Like an older version. Was this what she'd look like when she was older? She looked great. We'd never been big fans of rompers as clothing, but hers was better than most we'd seen. The skintight look definitely made it better. The half-cape was kind of dorky though, seriously, a cape?

"Go, Gyarados!"

Still, dorky outfit aside, she was pretty and we found ourselves wanting to call Marina already but we couldn't because it'd only been a few hours and it'd be weird and-

"Are you going to choose a pokemon, trainer?"

Wait, what? Oh, right. Battle.

"Oh, yes, uh, Yue!"

Our perfect and beautiful ice fox came out of her ball and nothing was amiss. Well, that's what everyone saw. What actually happened was she opened with a minor illusion that made it seem like she sprinted away from her landing to a spot two meters to her right, and in actuality moved to the left.

"An Alolan Ninetales, interesting. You chose your typing well, but it won't be enough to win. Gyarados will beat it and then your ace in the hole will be for nothing."

"Sure." Run your mouth more, you're just letting Yue set up more and more illusion bullshit.

"Fine. Gyarados, Fire Blast."

The water serpent spat out a very adequate fireball, but really, after Blaine's Gym it was kind of a let down in comparison. Also, and this was important, it aimed at the illusion. It detonated with a nice shockwave and heat wave, and then the Gyarados was surrounded by dozens of ice foxes. Which then all fired Confuse Rays.

"Aqua Tail through all the illusions!" The Gyarados proceeded to knock out a wall with its tail. It also went through a few of the illusory clones, but we had this feeling Not-Marina wasn't pleased regardless. "Again!"

This time it actually succeeded, but Yue jumped over the tail and answered with Freeze-Dry. Suffice to say getting hit with a double type advantage move doesn't end well for anything. It was fascinating to look at in a pokemon as big as a Gyarados though. You could actually see the skin drying out and then freezing over. Every single movement it made had the skin cracking horribly and only a few seconds of trying had rivers of blood running down all of its body. It was pretty fucking hardcore, but Not-Marina seemed to know when to recall, because she pulled it back before Yue could attack again.

"Go, Dragonair, Flamethrower!"

We could feel she was already resigned. She may not have known what to expect from us at first, but illusory ice kitsune bullshit was a hard to counter without effective access to area of effect attacks, and well, fairies were fully immune to attacks with a dragon typing. The Flamethrower was still nicely performed though, and showcased her training skills because the Dragonair spread it over most of the arena very thoroughly. Not nearly enough though, and Yue's return Blizzard hit full on and froze it solid.

"Return. Go, Kingdra. Hydro Pump!" Her water dragon spat out a wide torrent of water in a circle that actually managed to nail Yue and smacked her into a wall, and followed it with another Hydro Pump, this time aimed directly at her. She dodged, barely, and countered with a Freeze-Dry, to similar effect as the Gyarados. "Return. I forfeit the match. There's clearly nothing that my last Dragonair could do to beat your Ninetales, and then you'd still have three more."

She walked up to us and gave us a Rising Badge.

"I would be interested in a rematch at some point, although, perhaps without the Ninetales. I'd like to see what other pokemon you have."

Yeah. It really didn't get better for her even without Yue. Thinking on it, us fighting this Gym was even more unfair than us fighting Janine's. At least with Janine it was only a type advantage and not the full immunity to the main typing of this one. We took one last look at Not-Marina, trying to commit her to memory. We'd decided. We would call Marina from Ecruteak City tomorrow morning.

"One day, though for now we must go. Thank you for the fight."

We got back to the Pokemon Center and to our room. It was time for Lucky-tchii to do her thing. We let her out of her ball, and she was all over me in no time. Then she was marching us back out of our room and to the cafeteria. Right. Food. Nausea. Pill time I guess. I grabbed one, downed it dry, and then Lucky-tchii planted us at a table before she went out to grab us food. Guess she didn't trust us to eat well on our own. Twenty minutes later I was trying my best to eat everything the pink blob of love had told me to eat. It wasn't going well. It took another half hour to stuff it all down.

Well, time to call Daisy. We found her number and called her. We really shouldn't have been so excited to use a cell phone, especially when it wasn't much better better than a flip phone from my past life.

"Hello?"

"Hi Daisy."

"Azula? You got a pokegear?"

"Yup! And I'm keeping my word, obviously. Here's Lucky-tchii to give you updates."

Then Chansey babbled out a rapid fire string of "Chansey!"

"Well, that's good. How's it going Azula, where are you now?"

"Blackthorn City, we just got our Rising Badge."

"How the hell did you get to Johto so quickly?!"

"Fuck you, that's how."

"Azula."

"Sorry."

"Whatever. So, how are you doing?"

"We met this girl in New Bark Town, she was starting out as a trainer. Professor Elm gave her a Totodile, and we got a chance to fight with our new Torchic. Marina, that's her name, she was amazing, she's going to be a great trainer, I just know it. She managed to force a draw against me in her first battle! She's so pretty too! She has blue hair, and the Gym Leader here, Clair, she looks like an older Marina-"

"Alright, I get it, you have a crush on this girl. Okay. Wow. Never thought I'd see the day."

"Whaaaat?! No! No. She's just nice and amazing and-"

"Yes, yes, whatever you say. Oh Arceus, I can't believe this is happening. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay 'Zula?"

And she hung up on me. The fuck just happened?! Us, a crush? Ridiculous. Marina was just that amazing. Ugh. Daisy was being crazy, and that was saying something when it was us speaking. Whatever. We had delicious feelings to enjoy before I could never have them ever again. Let's hope we never get seriously injured enough to need painkillers again. Or that there are painkillers of sufficient strength that aren't opiates. Pain sucked. We spent a few hours in bed just _feeling_ before we drifted off to sleep. Tomorrow we would defeat Morty, as we now knew the leader of the Ecruteak Gym was called, and then we would be ready for the Conference. Then the hard stuff would start. By which we meant detoxing, not the fighting at the Conference. That would likely be a walk in the park.

And no, future, we were not going to pay attention to you, so fuck off and leave us alone already, you are extremely irritating. Unfortunately, we were unsurprised to see that the future ignored us and continued to be a fucking cunt.


	38. The Path 24

We woke up early in the morning, and got ready for the day ahead. We were excited. We checked out of the Pokemon Center and this time we did get to fly in a straight line for an hour and half until we reached a city with lots of people. Well that and it was kind of hard to not just aim for the city with the big ass burned tower where a bunch of legendary pokemon used to live. It kinda glowed to our psychic senses. We were so checking it out after we won our last badge. The time was almost right. We couldn't wait, we missed walking to places a little. There was a certain charm to it that couldn't be found in skipping over the journey straight to the destination via application of lots and lots of fire and phenomenal cosmic powers.

Ah, well. We touched down in the forests to the northwest of the city, and walked the rest of the way to the Pokemon Center. We didn't hold out much hope that this last fight would be much better than Clair's, since, you know, Ozai, but maybe Morty could make things interesting. We were remembering vague memories about him being a master of ghost pokemon, reputed to be second only to Agatha. Unfortunately that didn't mean much when you considered the general rarity of ghost pokemon and the rather lackluster showing of a few of the other Gym Leaders we'd fought.

A quick check in at the Center and some deliciously greasy breakfast later, we were back out and heading for the Gym. We walked into a large dojo-like room fucking teeming with ghosts. We'd sensed them halfway to the Gym, and they were making us, by which we meant us and our Gengars, really hungry. We refrained from eating them though, wouldn't do to make an enemy of Morty by eating his pet ghosts. It was hard though, place seemed like a fucking buffet to our senses, all those naked souls, ready to be devoured. Could we switch entirely to a diet of souls? The withdrawal wouldn't really affect our appetite on that front. Better not to, it'd seemed like the start of tragic villainous backstory.

We were still going to swing by the Burned Tower and eat a bunch of the ghosts there though, they were probably special and tasted extra nice, what with the ridiculous amount of energy free floating there. Morty was blonde, tall, and dressed stylishly with a ragged purple scarf, a purple headband, and a black sweater with purple cuffs. At least the dude had style. He was in the room with a bunch of kids, apparently teaching a class on ghost pokemon. Or something. Then an invisible Ghastly got too close and suddenly they were all running the fuck away from us. Huh. Morty noticed a second later, probably sensing the sudden wave of terror from all his pets.

He turned to look at us, curious, at first, and then his demeanor turned extremely wary. Could he sense Ozai? Could he sense me? Or perhaps he could sense all of us and our liking for eating souls. It didn't matter in the end, he took the initiative, standing in front of his students as if to shield them from a threat, three Gengars rising up from the floor between us. Probably definitely us. It was almost enough to make a couple of girls from Snowpoint feel unwanted. Well, not like that had ever stopped us.

"Who are you?" He asked us, trying very hard to seem intimidating.

"We are Pokemon Trainer Red, here to challenge for the Fog Badge."

"Really, that's all, a badge challenge." He was clearly sceptical, which was probably understandable, given that either he could sense something about us or his ghosts could and had told him, we were pretty much walking, talking abominations of nature.

"The fuck else would we be here for? Literally the only interesting thing about this city beside the towers is your Gym. Not even the ghosts, since we have better."

He was silent for a moment, likely considering our challenge, before finally speaking. "Very well. I accept your challenge on the condition that do not use the abomination in your shadow, or allow it to surface." He said the last part with a glance to his students. Oh, right. Kids who'd probably end up terribly traumatized from witnessing Ozai's magnificence.

Still, rude. Name calling was not cool. Let's just ignore the fact we knew him to be right and generally agreed with him about Ozai. Or that we'd in fact referred to our biggest Gengar by that exact same name before, more than once. Just now, even.

"Very well. We shall fight, then."

Luna hopped out from our jacket, walking a little bit ahead of me. It'd been a couple days since either one of use had a chance to cut a little loose with our powers, and well trained ghosts were prime targets to let go. We even had the added handicap of having to be careful not to hit Morty's students to add a little challenge. A Gym aide walked up to me and scanned our pokedex

"Pokemon Trainer Red challenges Gym Leader Morty for the Fog Badge. This shall be a three pokemon match. Choose your pokemon." Luna continued to stand where she was, because no one ever said we were anything but showy battle crazies, and a Haunter appeared out of nowhere in front of Morty. Wrong pokemon. So wrong. Worst possible move. He'd have been better off throwing the three Gengars at us. We liked Gengars. Haunters? Not so much. Pretty much hated them, really. My scars itched and burned just looking at it, and we could swear I felt colder just being close to it. It was a Haunter not under our control and needed to be eliminated.

"Shadow Ball!"

Fuck dodging, fuck Teleport, fuck Protect. We were going to fucking destroy that thing. Luna reached out with an effort of will, seizing the Shadow Ball mid air, much like Gardemom had done to us in the past with our Psychics, and squashed it like an evil grape. Credit where it's due, Morty didn't stop, and ordered his Haunter to keep shooting. It was a mistake, because thirty seconds later there were fifteen Shadow Balls just floating before us, and then they were all exploding against his Haunter. He recalled the blob of gas and a Gengar rose up from the floor. Weird, why didn't he keep his Gengars in his shadow like normal people?

We went on the offensive this time, teleporting to its side and slamming a Psychic into it, we didn't let up though, and another Psychic was flying to intercept it. Sadly it missed then the Gengar vanished and went to wherever the fuck it is ghosts go to when they're not in real space. It appeared right beside Luna and ate a Psychic to the face, because combat precognition bitch, a Haunter already tried that one on us once. We minraped it and made it our loyal minion.

It was a surprisingly tough Gengar. Sure, Luna wasn't putting her full power behind her attacks, but it'd still eaten two solid hits and kept going. So of course we nailed it with a full power hit. What else were we supposed to do? Give it a fighting chance? Hah. As if. It collapsed into that weird puddle of gas the whole line seemed to faint into, before Morty recalled it.

"Go, Dusknoir! Shadow Sneak!"

Ugh. Fuck. This was going to take ages. That thing looked strong a hell and the whole fucking line were solid tanks. It crashed against a Protect, about the only move we could have used to defend against bullshit moves like Shadow Sneak, and we countered with a full power Psychic. It hit and did damage, but we could tell we really were in for a long fight. Fortunately Dusknoir were brawlers, so Luna had the advantage in speed and range.

They traded blows for about five minutes, playing a game of cat and mouse where the mouse hit much harder than the cat and the cat was slow as fuck with sudden bursts of incredible speed, courtesy of Shadow Sneak. Okay, so the metaphor didn't really fit, but eventually the floating tank died and just collapsed to the floor. Damned hard counters, what was next, facing an overpowered special wall on our first match at the conference and barely scraping by? Ugh.

"Winner: Pokemon Trainer Red."

Morty's aide walked up to me and gave us our last badge. Finally. The future was about to crest too, we could feel it. Maybe calling Marina was what was so significant? She was pretty great, I could see her being super important in the future and-

"You've won your challenge, trainer, now leave. You are not welcome here."

"Wow, sure, fuck you too." Cunt. Luna got back into my jacket, and we left Morty's Gym, feeling extremely unwelcome, and like the metric kilofuckton of ghosts around it would try to eat us if we didn't leave right the fuck now. Well then. While we had no problems adding another massacre to our tally, we'd much rather it not make the kind of waves it would cause if we threw down right here, right now. We'd visit the Pokemon Center and get our team checked out, then call Marina on the way to the Burned Tower.

We had maybe three weeks of pills left, that meant we had about that long to get registered and do some light training for Zeus and our still unnamed Bagon. No time like the present. We walked up to the resident Nurse Joy and once she checked out our team, we made our request.

"We'd like to register to compete in this year's Indigo Plateau Conference please." Unsurprisingly, she looked a little startled, but to her credit she didn't doubt us immediately.

"Of course, I'll need to see your badges and your ID."

We handed her our case and she slotted each badge into an opening next to her computer, and our pokedex into the usual ID slot. The screen showed our information and the record of all our fights, we smiled again at the golden pokeballs signifying Blaine's Champions, and then the word "Authenticating" blinked across the the screen. Each of the badges on the screen lit up one by one until "Authenticated" replaced the previous message, and a computerized voice came out of the speakers.

"Congratulations on registering to compete at the Indigo Plateau Conference, good luck trainer." Nurse Joy smiled at us and then gave us back or badges and pokedex.

"Congratulations, I hope you do well Miss Red." Our smiles were so wide they hurt, and for once they didn't seem to be scaring the people around us. We were one step closer.

"Thank you."


	39. The Path 25

We dialed Marina's number and she answered after two rings. Her sweet voice came through the line and we couldn't help feeling giddy.

"Hello?"

"Hi Marina! It's Red."

"Oh, Red, hi! I'm so glad you called. How are you?" She seemed pretty upbeat about hearing from us.

"We're doing great, we just got our Fog Badge. Although we didn't really like Morty, that's the Gym Leader, he was super rude. Good thing Luna smacked his whole team."

"Wow, you have your first badge already?" She sounded so impressed! Marina was impressed! "It's too bad the Gym Leader was rude to you though. How's Zeus by the way? Is the little guy doing well?"

"Yup. We got him healed up a couple hours after our match, but we've been setting such a fast pace we haven't had the time to train him."

"That sucks, but hey, you've got your badge now, you can take a little time to train him, yeah?"

"That was the plan."

We chatted for the fifteen minutes it took us to reach the Burned Tower, before we had to hang up and get down to business, to eat some ghosts. Heh. The place was so saturated with energy we couldn't sense anything more than a couple of meters ahead of us. It didn't take long for it to start getting to us. We wouldn't be able sense an attack coming until the last second. Or easily find pokemon to devour. Well, there went that idea… and that was a cloud of Ghastly attacking a pair of Koffing. Well, lucky us.

Power coursed through us, and then we grasped them all, pulling them to us. There was so much energy around that the pokemon living here had to be special by exposure alone. Pulling the Ghastly apart was easy, they were weak and already a naked soul given form. The Koffing took more effort, but we still managed to rip their souls out easily. We crushed them together, breaking any coherence they may have had left and turning them into, well, whatever the fuck a soul's building blocks are. Then we started eating. It was disappointing. There was nothing special about it. Damn. We still kept eating. Waste not, want not, and all that.

We _Saw_ the attack an instant before it hit us. A torrent of water unlike any we'd ever seen before, smashing our broken bodies into a wall behind us, dead on first impact. Luna barely managed to raise a wall of force in front of us, the Hydro Pump slamming into and through it, and through the wall of force I'd raised behind it. We focused as much power as we could around our bodies, trying to resist as much of the attack as we could. It hit harder than anything we'd ever felt, agony ripping through my ribcage, and then we slammed into the wall, the back of my body erupting in pain near uniformly before we crumbled to the floor.

I felt my ghosts boil out of my shadow, rushing a massive previously hidden presence ahead of me. Luna Teleported out from under me, in much better shape than me, and went on the offensive as well, jumping straight to lethal force against whatever had attacked us. Everything was fuzzy, except for the blinding agony of course, _that_ was perfectly sharp, and the world was spinning. I couldn't concentrate enough to sense what was happening, but it seemed like we were losing. I _Saw_ the future again, saw from my position on the floor as my sister was crushed by a blast of water, as our Gengar were hit over and over until they collapsed into blobs of gas, and then felt as one last blast of water crushed me against the wall behind me.

I couldn't allow that. Had to fight the pain. I reached for Starmie and Yue's pokeballs, my rib cage protesting every single movement we made with more pain, barely managing to press the release and send them rolling away. They came out and I commanded them to help Luna. Maybe they would be enough. I tried to concentrate through the pain, and _Saw_ as after a long battle my pokemon came back to me after forcing whatever had attacked us to retreat, and Luna deposited Starmie's body beside me, its once brilliant gem completely crushed.

Rage was starting blossom in my heart. It helped fight through the pain. This… thing thought it could try to assassinate us and succeed? Thought it could try to assassinate us and flee after killing one of our own? No. Definitely not. It would either die or be captured. I pushed myself up until I was on hands and knees, pain and rage turning my vision red, I pushed myself even further, until I finally managed to lay my back against the well behind me. When the pain from moving so much faded a little and I could finally see, I saw something that didn't make any sense.

Suicune.

Suicune had tried to kill us. One of the legendary beasts had just tried to kill us. Had, in a way, succeeded twice in futures that would never come to be anymore. I didn't understand, couldn't understand. It made no sense. I projected my senses, trying to feel Suicune, and felt its hatred for us. It despised us completely, wanted nothing more than to destroy us. In its eyes we were abominations, monsters of the worst sort. I pried deeper, looking for why, and _Saw_ the moment it noticed us, saw through its eyes as we destroyed the souls of over a dozen pokemon and ate them. Ah. Well, fuck. Fuck. It would never stop hunting us, not that I wanted to, or thought we might be able to escape without having to sacrifice at least one of our pokemon, and that was not acceptable.

Fine. If Suicune wanted us, it could try. I didn't need a healthy body to contribute to the fight, and we were going to make it regret ever attacking us. I grabbed at my power, letting it out to a degree we'd never done before, and then we were one again. We could feel the headache starting to build already, my body still incapable of fully handling so much of the future. We were going to have to replace another jacket. We had no doubts as to whether I'd end up bleeding all over the one I was wearing. We'd need everything to win this.

We extended the mental connection to all of the others, and the change was instantaneous. Their dodges became cleaner, faster, their attacks hit harder and more often, and their coordination rose to a whole new level. Yue wove illusion over illusion that helped cover for the others, kept them safer from attacks, the Gengars popped out of reality faster, sometimes without even needing to see the attack coming, or positioning themselves to capitalize on forced moves better. Starmie rained Thunderbolts and Psychics at a rate of fire that made it impossible to dodge even a quarter of them.

We would win, even if it was the last thing we did.

Luna and Ozai were the frontline. They kept Suicune's attention while the others took mostly free shots at it, taking care to face him away from me so it couldn't take a shot at my largely defenseless body. Thank fuck it didn't seem to be truly intelligent. I started charging the strongest Psychic we'd ever thrown, while letting my eyes and future sight give my monsters the edge they needed not only to survive the fight, but win it. A stray thought occurred to us, and the rage it caused nearly made us to lose concentration. No. A command to our Gengars and they all used Mean Look. No, Suicune, you were not going to get away.

If we'd called our previous charged Psychics "Naval Artillery Strikes" then they were the naval guns of early cruisers or battleships. What we were charging now was more like a full broadside of 18 inch guns. We were going crush Suicune. Slowly, but surely, our monsters turned the legendary dog so it was presenting its flank to me. Break, or die, dog, we cared not which. We let the Psychic go, saw it blur through the space between us in an instant, and heard it strike Suicune with an explosion of force and sound that would have knocked down our own team if not for the forewarning that allowed them to vanish at the last second or hide behind Protects. We felt the shockwave with bruising force all the way to where my body lay crumbled against the wall.

And were before one of the legendary dogs had stood strong, now there was a broken beast, unconscious, defeated. We laughed. We laughed even though every movement was agony, we laughed because we were alive, and we laughed because we were going to capture a legendary, even if we may never be able to use it at all. We took out a Premier Ball, and with our powers sent it out on an arc that landed on Suicune, absorbing it in a swirl of light. The ball didn't even shake and locked immediately, before it was transported to father's ranch. That… was not ideal. We weren't sure how long we'd be out of commission, and we needed to make sure father didn't let that thing out. It was too dangerous.

Fuck. Again. More, even, because now it could be a danger to our mothers. We had to flag it, and we had to flag it now. We recalled our pokemon, and Luna Teleported us to our room at the Pokemon Center. The pain was unbearable, and the adrenaline was fading fast. We grabbed Lucky-tchii's ball and let her out, she could help. She took one look at us and went into action damn near instantaneously, checking us over, poking all over and getting a scream of pain when she barely even touched my ribs. Then she grabbed the egg in her pouch, did something with it, and then she was shoving a gooey liquid down our throats, mostly mine.

"Chansey, Chansey!" Cracked ribs, concussion, extensive tissue damage, hairline fractures all over, and a nervous system so frayed she was worried I'd suffered nerve damage. Luna was mostly just very bruised and exhausted. Thank fuck for pokemon biology. The egg she'd fed us would accelerate our healing to a ridiculous degree, to the point we weren't in any danger anymore, but it had been a close call, on many different levels. Luna jumped up to the computer terminal included in the room and set about flagging Suicune as "Stay the fuck away from this if you want to live, don't even heal it, hell, don't even look at it." Or as close to that as she could manage. Lucky-tchii had meanwhile guided me to the bed and tucked me in, then tucked Luna in as well.

We tried to sleep, but the pain from my cracked ribs was intense. We reached out to our bag, grabbing two of the pain pills and bringing them to us. I took them, and realized as I did that I'd been sobbing in pain the whole time. Slowly, the pain faded and we drifted off to exhausted sleep. So much blood spilled, so much.


	40. The Path 26

We woke up and immediately wished I hadn't. We grabbed two pills and downed them. Fuck. There went our fucking timeline. Four days of pills in two, and we had a feeling we'd end up taking more before the day was over. The pain slowly faded, and we managed to start moving. Then the pain from my ribs sent me back to not moving. We'd have to separate, physically, at least. Luna was feeling better, and she grabbed all our pokeballs, let Lucky-tchii out of hers, and walked out. Had to get our team healed after getting thrown around by a legendary. Ozai had looked ready to fold when our Psychic ended the fight.

"Chansey!"

"We know I'm fucked and overdoing it with the pain pills, you don't need to reminds us."

"Chansey!"

"No, we didn't know opiate dependence causes hyperalgesia, but it's obvious in retrospect. Now egg me, we want me to heal faster since we're not delaying detox."

"Chansey!"

"We don't care if it strains our system, we'll make sure to eat well. You can even be there to force us to eat as much as you like."

She looked dubious, but eventually grabbed an egg, cracked it open into my mouth, and left in a huff to look for Luna so she could bring more food. That's fine, the… huh, what even were the pills I was taking? We floated the bottle over to read the active ingredients and… morphine sulfate, 60mg. The fuck, morphine came in pill form? Right, well, the morphine combined with the egg had us feeling delicious. If we focused hard enough, we could even feel the egg working its magic and my body healing. Or it could just be the morphine, who the fuck knew?

Luna came back ten minutes later carrying more than a few plates of food and our pokeballs, Lucky-tchii behind her. We ate, and spent a few hours just letting the Chansey egg do its job, reviewing our trainer record and seeing what information the storage system had gotten out of our new Suicune. It wasn't much beyond its weight and size. Not surprising, it was probably the first ever formally captured Suicune. We had a feeling we'd never be able to make use of it. It hated us too much, and trying to mindrape a legendary seemed like a quick way to end up a vegetable. That thing had a lot of power. Maybe after Luna evolved? Thoughts for later.

We called Marina while we healed, chatted with her for hours, just enjoying the sound of her voice. It helped that the longer we talked to Marina, the longer we didn't have to talk to Daisy. Eventually she had to hang up to fight a battle someone challenged her to, and then we were out of excuses. Lucky-tchii was giving us this look too, like she was completely unimpressed by our delaying tactics. Fine. We dialed my niece's number like women condemned. She was so not going to be happy with us, and she was going to ask awkward questions like "Why would Suicune try to kill you?" and "What did you do to make it hate you so much?". Ugh.

"Hi 'Zula, how are you?"

"Hi, uh, how about we let Lucky-tchii answer that one for us? It'd probably be best to just get things over with."

"What? Azula, why are you slurring your words? How many pills did you take? What did you do this time, Azula Luna Sato?" Ouch, full name. Wait, had she really called us both out at the same time?

"Chansey, Chansey!" Snitch.

"What?! How?" Yeah, there she went. "You two, explain, now."

"Uh, we were attacked, unprovoked, by a vicious pokemon intent upon doing us harm. We were just minding our own business, eating a light snack at the Burned Tower here in Ecruteak City and then we foresaw an attack on our persons and defended ourselves."

We could almost feel her unimpressed glare through the pokegear. Yeah, didn't think so.

"Try again, this time maybe with more details and less obfuscating doubletalk."

"Right. Uh, so we were eating a light snack and uh, well, a Suicune tried to kill us with a Hydro Pump. We _Saw_ the attack coming in time to block most of it, then we took it down, captured it, and here we are." Silence.

"Uhuh. Now the truth."

"It's the truth! Look, you can go ask father what our last capture was if you need proof."

"So let me get this straight, a legendary pokemon tried to kill you, which you survived, and then your fought back while concussed, with broken ribs, extensive soft tissue damage, and a bunch of other injuries, for long enough to beat it and capture it."

"Yeah."

"And did at some point occur to you to escape instead of staying back and risking your life?!"

"Well, duh, but we wouldn't have managed to get out without losing at least one of our pokemon, and that was unacceptable."

"So you fought a legendary pokemon?!"

"Yeah. Please don't tell anyone."

She made this sound we couldn't quite decipher. Frustration, exasperation, worry, hysterical laughter. It was like a bunch of different reactions crashed together and fused into an unholy amalgamation of all of them at the same time, and that was what came out.

"Azula, you captured a legendary. I don't need to tell anyone, it's in the system already."

"We meant about the other stuff, it's not like it's an issue anymore and father has been so worried lately he's been drinking a lot, and we also really don't want our mothers to worry. Besides, it'd get in the way of detoxing if we had to deal with handling the fallout from all of this."

"Damnit. You suck Azula. So much." She took a deep breath and blew it out. "Fine. Just… when?"

"Probably next week. We'd planned to delay a couple weeks to get things in order, but my ribs hurt so much we're going to run out of pills faster than expected."

"Do you want me to help?"

"We… don't think it'd be safe for you. Lucky-tchii and our team should be more than enough to hold me."

"Okay, I love you two, please be careful." She sounded so tired. We needed to spend some time with her, help her destress a little, take her on an adventure. We'd make a day of it. More importantly, we were slurring our words, which meant that we'd slurred through all our conversation with Marina. Oh no. We must have sounded so weird to her. She was an angel for not commenting on it. "After all, how will you gush about your crush to me if something happens to you?"

"Shut up! We don't have a crush! Marina is just awesome, okay? But fine, we'll be careful. We'll let you know before we start, okay?"

She was giggling at us when she hung up. Mean. Nevermind, she clearly didn't need us to take her out on an adventure. She needed an insane asylum to help her with this crazy talk about us having a crush. A crush. Ridiculous. We did not have crushes. Marina was just our friend, nothing more. Besides, if ever it came to such we would have lovers, not crushes. It sounded much classier that way. Oh... We saw my face through Luna's eyes, and we couldn't help thinking that being as pale as me lead to some pretty impressive blushes. Uh. Better not think about such things anymore.

"Hey, Lucky-tchii, what do you know about opiate withdrawal?"

"Chansey!"

"Of course you do, are you like a fully trained nurse or doctor or something?"

"Chansey!"

"Oh. Yeah, makes sense. Of course father would have shelled out for the best training available for you. Anything to increase her life expectancy, no matter how little, or how big, or how expensive."

"Chansey!"

"I'm glad you've kept her safe. So, paint us a word picture. How bad is it going to get?"

"Chansey, Chansey."

Well, fuck. Let's hope Luna can keep my phenomenal cosmic power in check while detox happened. All the same, we should probably do it someplace people won't miss too much if I trashed it. Hopefully we could channel some of the horrible stuff coming at me into fighting. Do the train into exhaustion thing so that we were too tired to be in horrible mental and physical agony. Hopefully. We weren't really holding out much hope. Anxiety was starting to claw at our insides just thinking about it. Fuck. We'd think of something, we had some days left to plan things out.

As the pain from my still cracked ribs started inching into agony again, we took another two pills, and in so doing felt the date I would have to quit inch a little closer. We didn't have too much longer to worry about after that though, and again drifted off to sleep after a couple hours of enjoying the feelings inside me.


	41. The Path 27

We needed to find the best place to detox. Lucky-tchii had said it could take anywhere between three days to two weeks to really be out of the woods with regards to the super gnarly physical symptoms. We were certain we could handle any psychological symptoms with enough application of psychic surgery. Cheating? Definitely. Taking the easy way out? Definitely. But we weren't taking any risks with this. We would be rid of this completely, even if we had to rip chunks out of my soul to do it. Hopefully it wouldn't come to that, it wasn't something we wanted to go through again.

We couldn't do it in Johto, there was too much of a chance that another legendary beast could find us when we were vulnerable and we couldn't be sure it wouldn't attack out of hand. That left Kanto and whatever we could reach quickly in Sinnoh from Snowpoint City. Maybe one of the islands around Cinnabar? Yes, that seemed like the best option. It was time to start setting things up. We showered, wincing when we saw the bruise covering pretty much the whole of my front, father must never learn of this. We finished getting ready and checked out of the Pokemon Center, Teleporting to Cinnabar Island near Blaine's arena.

We would find a good island and then bring in materials to establish an acceptable temporary refuge. We could be too dangerous to do this near other people. We found one before too long, between the Seafoam Islands and Cinnabar. It wasn't too big, and had a small jungle we could use for materials to build shelter. We landed at the center and made a clearing, then using the trees we'd uprooted to make flooring and supports for a roof. Thank you ninja memories for more or less teaching us how to build safely, even if it was mostly meant to build hidden boltholes from which one could do surveillance or retreat to after a mission.

A Teleport later and we were in Celadon, where we threw on a quick disguise before buying a cheap mattress and enough bottled water and travel food to last three weeks. Our poor bank account was dying a slow death after being healthy for so long. Then we Teleported back to our island straight from the department store where we'd bought the mattress. It was almost time. We would wait until we were out of pills to give my ribs more time to heal, and then I would suffer horribly for being such a stupid fucking idiot and hope that Luna and the rest could hold me down. Ugh. At least we got to actually do touristy stuff on Cinnabar while waiting, even if it was only a little.

We managed to last a week. We mostly spent it training Zeus and Bagon, which we'd decided to call Sozin. We didn't make much progress with them, but we were certain we would manage to get them up to speed way before the Conference came rolling around, or at least Zeus. Say whatever you like about the traditional starters, but they grew fast. Two, maybe three more weeks of intensive training and we'd have a Combusken on our hands, then a month or two more and it'd be a Blaziken. Sozin on the other hand we may have to train right up until the Conference to get it to a Salamence.

We called Daisy and Marina daily, chatting away about whatever came to mind, and the latter told us about her first Gym Battle, where Wani-Wani and a Misdreavus she'd caught led her to victory against Leader Faulkner. She gave awesome names. There was something appealing about a girl-like ghost called "Little Miss". We'd told her there was a chance we wouldn't be able to call for some time, but that we'd call her as soon as we could. Daisy continued to be silly about Marina and us, but was generally encouraging about talking with her.

Lucky-tchii had tended to my injuries and the bruises were almost entirely gone by the time we took our last pill. Her eggs had also managed to accelerate the healing of my ribs to the point just moving wasn't terribly painful. Progress. So we settled down for the time of our fucking lives, continuing to train Zeus and Sozin, while our Gengars and Luna kept an eye on me. Actually, better not take any risks, so we let Yue and Starmie out. We were actually a little jealous, Yue looked like she was really enjoying a nice day at the beach.

Night came and went, and I woke up with chills, excessive sweating, a runny nose, and fucking pain everywhere. We were forgetting something. Hm. Well, we'd remember eventually. Hopefully. Time for Lucky-tchii to come out and make sure I'm not going to die if I get a fever or something. She popped out of her ball and started checking me over.

"Chansey!"

"Thanks. I already feel like hell, and if what you said before is true then this is barely the beginning. Please be careful and let our pokemon handle things if things get bad. We need you awake."

"Chansey!"

By the time night came about I felt like I was dying. By the time the morning came again, I wanted to die and the pain was so bad I hadn't slept a minute. That's when the hallucinations started. It started with the faces of the Rockets from Mount Moon, seeing them out of the corner of my eyes. Then they started asking me why, over and over again, you know, despite the fact we didn't even remember their voices. Then the five from the Game Corner, followed by shadowy silhouettes joined in. Misao Kirk was, perhaps, the one that seemed most real.

"I am real, little murderess." The hallucination talked to me. Huh. "I'm here to avenge myself upon you for killing all of us."

Kinda hypocritical if you ask me, since she'd tried to drug and kidnap us, but hey, anyone stupid enough to join the Rockets couldn't be that smart, or burdened with a solid grasp on reality, to begin with.

"You're an abomination, you little monster. You stand there all high and mighty, and yet you thought nothing of murdering so many people."

Eh. Someone had to take out the trash, might as well have been us, and if we profited immensely from doing so, all the better. There was a reason we'd labeled most of the people at the Game Corner base as "Necessary Collateral Damage", and anyone who went around trying to kidnap kids deserved whatever they got.

"Die!" Apparently the hallucination hadn't liked what we had to think about her and she lunged at me. When her hands closed around my throat and her hallucinatory attempt to strangle me actually seemed to be strangling me, I started thinking there may have been something more to this. I focused my power on her, fighting her, but she was strong, far stronger than she should have been. I couldn't breathe.

I pulled at the bond I had with Luna, borrowing enough of her power to break whatever the fuck was strangling me.

"Just die already, monster!" She looked a little unhinged. Then she looked a lot unhinged. Was she reading my mind? She kept lunging at me, but well, now that I had advance warning, the combat training I'd gotten from her made it trivial to dodge her crazed attacks. "You ate me, and I'll kill you if it's the last thing I do!"

Oh. Oooh. Could this be the remnants of Misao Kirk? We'd been high as fuck and blackout drunk when we'd eaten her. Likely hadn't taken any precautions to keep mental contamination at bay. Hm. How the fuck was I supposed to fix this? Maybe we could kill her? I grabbed her on her next lunge, and tried to break her neck. Just tried, because apparently I wasn't strong enough to actually manage it. Fuck.

She threw me off, and then she was straddling and strangling me again. I saw behind her the faceless shadows of the people my Gengars had eaten, of the ones we'd eaten, and then the faces of the two I'd killed… with my knife. I reached for it, barely managing to pry it out from under me, and I stabbed her side, over and over again. I felt each stab, deep inside, but I kept going, I didn't want a parasitic consciousness living inside my soul, and if I had to kill a part of me to destroy the remnants of Misao Kirk, then so be it. She started going limp, so we rolled her over and kept stabbing. My knife went through her right eye and then I was on the beach of my island, feeling like when the Haunters had bitten me, except less bite-y and more stabby.

Well, not a hallucination. Fuck. We'd failed to properly kill Misao Kirk's soul when we ate her, and enough had managed to hang on and coalesce into something solid inside of us. The bitch had likely been feeding on all the other souls we were eating to get stronger and stronger, waiting for a moment of weakness to do us in. I could feel Luna's pain across our bond, her soul feeling similarly stabbed as mine. At least I'd only needed to kill one of her to rid both of us of her bitch self.

Ugh. We'd have to be more careful next time we ate someone for their knowledge. Then my body decided to remind me that it wasn't just our souls that were in pain. Maybe we could have just half a pill?

"Ralts."

Okay, okay. No pills.

"Chansey!"

"D-don't worry L-lucky-tchii, I had t-to deal with a s-squatter. Do y-you think one o-of your eggs c-could help with the p-pain?"

"Chansey!"

"O-of course not."

"Chansey!"

Fuck. That's what we'd forgotten. I grabbed our pokegear and dialed Daisy's number. It took a while. My fingers wouldn't stop shaking.

"Hey Azula, what's up? You didn't call yesterday."

"Uh. W-we f-forgot to c-call. Lucky-t-tchii reminded u-us just n-now."

"What the hell 'Zula, are you okay?"

"Chansey!"

"W-what s-she said."

"Oh. Where are you? I'll come help."

"Too f-far. Don't w-worry, we'll b-be fine." And I hung up.

The pain kept getting worse, and worse. Someone was screaming. I felt Luna get closer, felt her struggle to keep down the pain and contain my power, keep it from hurting her, hurting me, and from hurting our pokemon. It was too much. We were near equals, her extra month of life giving her a tiny edge, and she couldn't contain me on her own anymore than I could her. She'd tried Imprison, but the seal had broken within minutes, so she was forced to act upon me and my power directly. I could feel the heartache my suffering caused her, could feel as she came to the conclusion that there was really only one thing she could do if she wanted to both spare me the pain and contain my power. I felt her sadness as she prepared to let go and make a choice she couldn't ever take back.

I reached out to her, stopping her. I couldn't let my idiocy take that choice away from her. She would evolve when she wanted to, and no sooner, my mistakes would not be a factor in that choice. She refused to back down though, and I loved her for caring so much about me. Clearly there was only one choice I could make in the face of this. She was incredulous when I told her. I don't think she expected me to ever even consider doing what I asked of her. She asked me if I was sure, because it would risk so much, change so much, but she mattered more and really, we were Red Azula and Luna, fucking nothing could stop us if we didn't want it to. Finally she nodded and reached deep inside of me, then darkness.


	42. The Path 28

"Whatever. So, how are you doing?" That girl, I'd worry that her mouth would get her in trouble one day if she weren't, apparently, some kind of psychic powerhouse with a second ridiculously overpowered psychic powerhouse as her sister. Then there was the entirely too terrifying and creepy Gengar living in her shadow, and whatever other ridiculous monsters she may have caught. Didn't grandfather say she had two other Gengars she kept on her? I shivered, how the hell did she live like that?

"We met this girl in New Bark Town, she was starting out as a trainer. Professor Elm gave her a Totodile, and we got a chance to fight with our new Torchic. Marina, that's her name, she was amazing, she's going to be a great trainer, I just know it. She managed to force a draw against me in her first battle! She's so pretty too! She has blue hair, and the Gym Leader here, Clair, she looks like an older Marina-"

Wait, what? What the hell? Was I hearing this right? Azula… had a crush? Oh Arceus, oh what. I could already see her normally blank, pale face pinking at the thought of this Marina girl, and actually smiling. Smiling! Those girls only ever really smiled for their mothers, but just hearing Azula gush about Marina this and Marina that I could hear the smile on her face, and if Azula was smiling and talking in plural, then Luna was smiling too. Well, good, they needed reasons to smile. Asami, Garde, and Ashely needed to hear about this. They worried so much about her, they'd be happy to know she had her first crush. Grandfather too, he'd been down lately.

"Alright, I get it, you have a crush on this girl. Okay. Wow. Never thought I'd see the day."

"Whaaaat?! No! No. She's just nice and amazing and-"

What's this? Azula in denial? Oh, I could already see a brilliant blush on her face while. I wish I had video of that. She had it bad. That Marina girl must be something else.

"Yes, yes, whatever you say. Oh Arceus, I can't believe this is happening. I'll talk to you tomorrow, okay 'Zula?"

Okay, it was nearing dinner time, so Ashely and Garde were likely cooking while Asami "helped". Poor woman, she was a genius with desserts, but if she tried anything besides sweets more complex than pasta it ended badly. Well, time to "help" them cook, by which I meant eat some snacks while we gossiped about their daughters.

I found them exactly where I expected them to be, in the middle of some rather racy flirting. Good grief, with how those three kept on, I wonder how Azula and Luna ever managed not to walk in on something daughters shouldn't witness their mothers doing. I coughed to get their attention, and was rewarded with Asami and Garde blushing bright red at being caught in their little flirt fest, then blushing harder when Ashely bit Asami's ear lightly and groped Garde. Oh, we definitely needed to get a camera on Azula and Luna when they were with that girl. If Asami was any indication, their reactions were bound to be amazing. Those two took after their birth mothers hard.

Garde sensed my eagerness to talk as soon as she calmed down a little, and I could feel her curiosity peaking. Asami and Ashely felt Garde a moment later and I had three pairs of eyes looking at me expectantly. How best to tell them about it?

"So… I spoke with Azula."

"What? Really? How?"

I grabbed my pokegear from my back pocket and showed it to them.

"Apparently, keeping in touch with the terrible twosome is as easy as having one of these so it's easier for her to call you. Well, that and a secret ingredient~"

"What's the secret ingredient?"

"Them meeting someone they wanted to call so much that they bought a pokegear of their own."

They were instantly hooked. They knew their daughters well, and for someone to get them to notice them, much less want to talk to to them, well, that was nothing short of miraculous.

"My tiny aunt called me and we talked a little, but then when I asked her how she was doing…" Huge smirk ready. "She told me about this new trainer she met in New Bark Town. Apparently she visited Professor Elm's lab just in time to see a starter choosing ceremony."

"Must have been a pretty impressive trainer if they got those two to give them the time of day."

"Oh, yes, from what your daughters told me in between gushing about how wonderful and pretty this girl is, they think she'll be a great trainer."

"What?!" The sheer incredulity coming from them was tangible.

"I could practically feel the blush in Azula's voice when she talked about her. She's got it bad."

What followed was prime gossipy girl talk the likes of which could only be achieved when the subject is the baby girl of the family and her first crush. Grandfather walked in on us looking for a picture of Leader Clair so we could have a better idea of what Marina looked like. Then I had a better idea and wheedled grandfather into looking up her trainer ID with his credentials and huh, those two had good taste. The girl was very cute. She also definitely had to be related to Leader Clair. They looked like sisters. She was probably someone's dirty little secret.

Grandfather didn't react right though. Oh sure, he seemed a little happy for the girls, but he was so subdued. Something was really weighing on him. We'd all tried asking, but he wasn't telling us what was wrong. Maybe if Azula asked him? He had a soft spot the size of a Wailord for his baby girl.

The next time Azula called she sounded so high she couldn't speak right, and for a second I was backstage at the Hoenn Grand Festival with _him_ again, watching him fail out because he couldn't even stand up from the couch he'd fallen on. Then Lucky-tchii spoke and my insides turned to ice. It only got worse when Azula explained that a legendary pokemon had tried to kill her and come very close to succeeding. It had to have been after that Gengar of hers. It was _wrong_ on a level I'd never seen before.

Then she'd guilted me into not saying anything about the rather extensive injuries she'd received. That girl was a menace whenever anyone let her open her mouth. At least it seemed she was finally going to stop taking those pills. I still teased her about Marina though. If the brat was going to put me in a tough spot, I was at least going to get something out of it.

I still checked if she'd really captured a Suicune. I had to be sure. He'd lied about so many things to so many people so he could keep up his habit, I couldn't just trust Azula, not when it came to this. I was happy to see that she'd been telling the truth, and astounded to see a fucking legendary pokemon captured. How had she done it? Grandfather even came out of his funk for a little bit to research it, even if he was limited in how much he could do, given the flags Azula, or most likely Luna since my little aunt had probably been too injured to do it herself, had set on it.

I made myself scarce after that, her mothers and grandfather likely wanted to talk to her, or ask me if I'd spoken with her, and I didn't want to have to lie to them. We spoke daily, always after she was done talking to her little girlfriend, so I got to hear her gush about her and how well she was doing. She put up a brave face, but I could hear fear and anxiety eating her up inside as the days passed. Then she missed a day.

The next time she called I could hear pain in her voice and she was stuttering heavily. The day had come. I wanted to help her, but she was scared. She thought her gift would be dangerous to people around her, and refused, before hanging up on me. I was glad her mothers had left for Viridian that morning on some sort of security business about Team Rocket, because Garde was getting suspicious. I didn't sleep that night, and I barely slept until the day they came back. I don't think I'll ever forget Azula's screams.


	43. The Path 29

My little sister was many things, intelligent, crazy, anxious, scared, fiercely loyal, fiercely stubborn, arrogant, prideful, amoral, a liar, a killer, loving, maybe even a coward about some things. However if there ever was something she was not, it was unwilling to sacrifice her health at the altar of her ambitions. She would go as far as she needed to fulfill her goals and deal with the consequences when she couldn't ignore them any longer. She couldn't be bothered to care about a great many things, but she positively loved and thrived when in the pursuit of power.

I'd often wondered why she lusted after power so much, it'd been her main goal in life since we both had had memory, and I'd come to the conclusion that at its root it stemmed from a deep hatred and terror of not being in control. She believed that if she became powerful enough, eventually there wouldn't be anything or anyone that could force her to do something she didn't want to. I wasn't sure she was wrong in trying, even though I knew that might shouldn't make right. She couldn't trust the world, could barely trust a vanishingly small number of people, few enough as to count them on the fingers of her hands and have fingers left over. So she was determined to gain the power to force the world to bend to her will.

I loved my sister more than I loved anything else in the world. For her I would do anything. Nothing else mattered. She would be happy, she would have no need to be afraid, even if we needed to slaughter our way to enough power to challenge Arceus itself. There was nothing we couldn't do, and there was nothing short of harming our mothers or family that we wouldn't do. Already we'd accomplished so much, had gathered such power as to challenge a living legend of the world, even if the one we'd broken was perhaps among the weakest of them all. Not even the sky was a limit for us.

Pain had made her feel out of control, so she'd sought to counter it, and in so doing had lost even more control than the pain took from her. I could feel her fear, frustration, and rage whenever she let herself dwell on it, at herself, at the world, at everything. She feared losing herself to the drugs she'd taken, and she feared the suffering stopping taking them would bring her. In the end, she feared and hated the loss of control more, and she'd prepared to stop taking the pills that'd caused her so much trouble.

Lucky-tchii had told us how bad it could get, but there was a difference between being told something and living through it. It started bad and quickly got worse. By the end of the second day I couldn't stop her pain and stop her out of control powers from devastating everything on the island, us included. The pain was so bad it leaked through our bond even when I tried to actively silence our connection. It was at this moment that I finally truly understood my sister's fears of losing control. I couldn't let her suffer, and I couldn't let her be hurt any more than she already was. I wasn't powerful enough to keep her safe from both the pain and herself at the same time. If I wanted to have the necessary power I would need to evolve. To finally take that plunge, to let go, to make a choice I didn't want to make yet.

I cried, over the loss of my form, over the loss of control. Truly it was something abominable, and my sister had the right of it. Power was the answer to any problem. I felt the well of power inside me, always ready to burst forth, always pushing to be let loose and transform me into something else, and slowly let it slip from my grip. For you, Little Sis, only for you.

Then she stopped me. My sister reached out through the agony that had become her world and held back the power herself. She knew the pain and fear of losing control just as well as I did, maybe better since she'd lived with it for longer, and she refused to let her mistakes take mine away from me. I loved her. I loved her and just for that, for caring more about me than herself I would not let her suffer, no matter the cost. She still refused. Stubborn Little Sis.

Then she told me what she wanted me to do instead, and I couldn't help but think that maybe the pain had driven her crazy. Crazier. Going home, asking our mothers for help… She was willing to face her greatest fear for me. I asked her if she was sure, for this was a big decision, and she was resolute. I mattered more to her, and whatever else, she was still my arrogant, confident sister, and she was certain that we could get through anything if we had to.

So I gathered my power, gearing up for the strongest Imprison I'd ever put on her. It wouldn't last long, but hopefully it'd be long enough to get her home and get our mothers to help. It suppressed her power, and held. Then I could finally spare the energy to render her fully unconscious through the pain. I took a minute to gather my breath. Sister wrangling was exhausting work! I recalled Starmie and Yue, and our ghosts went back into her shadow. Lucky-tchii came close and then we were in the Oak family dining room.

For future reference, Teleportation after your sister excised a malignant tumor from your souls and left behind an open wound hurts a lot. At least it hadn't been sis who'd done the Teleporting, it would have probably been even worse given her peculiar inability to Teleport like normal people. Unfortunately it was bad enough already, and sis woke back up screaming from the sleep I'd put her under. Doubly so because we'd apparently dropped in during dinner, and Daisy and sis' father were very, uh, startled to hear Little Sis' screams. When I asked Daisy where our mothers were, I couldn't help cursing at a higher power, because of course when she finally decided to ask for help, our mothers were out of town on business in Viridian City.

They sprang to action immediately, trying to help Little Sis, but there was nothing they could do. We'd needed our mothers' help. Sis had finally asked for help, risked so much, and all for nothing. I told her father the basics when he asked, because sis already felt bad enough about her relationship with him, but there was no way he was ever finding out why she was in pain and her power out of control, at least not from me. She would tell him when she was ready and no sooner, if she told him at all.

That's when he surprised us. He had something that could help? How? His lab coat was hanging from his chair, and he took a case from one of the pockets. He opened it and took out a familiar silver rectangle. The project he'd finished working on the second time we caught him drinking. He placed it on her throat and it snapped out into a choker around her neck, above the the one that had her Key Stone. Then he took out the small rectangles that had been with the silver choker and put them on her temples. They stuck to her skin, and a red light blinked on at the front of the choker.

Her power vanished completely, to the point I could barely feel her at the furthest edge of my senses. What? No. How could he? I didn't need to read his mind to know why he had those things on hand, why he'd created them at all, why he'd finished them just after sis threatened to use her power to keep him from stopping us. I barely kept myself from lashing out. His treachery was to our benefit for now, but I could tell he felt my instant hatred for his device, and to an extent, for him. At least it kept him from asking questions. I levitated sis to her room, Daisy and Lucky-tchii following behind us. At least keeping her asleep was easier now that her power was suppressed.

"Ralts." I asked Lucky-tchii if she could take care of Little Sis if I kept her unconscious until the symptoms subsided.

"Chansey!" Then so be it. I dove into her mind and set it into a loop of unconsciousness. Without her power it would take her a couple days to wake up on her own, and if she got better faster, I could wake her ahead of time. We stayed with sis all night, and I crashed after barely sleeping for two days.

After what felt like barely an hour of sleeping, but was likely more like ten, I was awoken by mom shaking me lightly. The first thing I saw was our mothers' worried faces and I knew I was in for an interesting morning. Sigh. Always one thing after another.

"Ralts."

Better to take things someplace else. This had the potential to get loud and I wasn't sure Little Sis would sleep through it if it got loud enough. Better not risk it.

"Okay, but you will explain why you Teleported in with your sister screaming in pain."

To quote Little Sis, "How best to squirrel out of this one?". Maybe her tendency towards being overdramatic had some merit. I felt like a woman condemned while walking to the dining room. Fuck. All of it made worse by the fact I could barely sense her. It felt wrong. Whatever her father had made was an abomination. Imprison didn't have a tenth of the effect those things did. I teleported on top of the table, and everyone else sat down. I felt like I was about to be interrogated.

"Alright Luna, start talking."

"Ralts."

"Don't be cute. What's wrong with your sister?" Mama Asami had a way of giving even Little Sis pause, and having that directed at me was very uncomfortable. I didn't want to tell them. It wasn't right. I didn't want to betray Little Sis' trust, and this seemed like the kind of thing they should hear from her, not from anyone else, even me.

"Ralts."

"Baby, you have to give us something. You can't just expect us to leave this alone until Azula wakes up." Mom was right, of course, but I was at a loss on how to handle this.

"Ra-Ralts!"

"So you're saying that due to reasons you're not willing to divulge, Azula was in pain and as a result her gift was out of control. Despite this you two decided to solve whatever the problem was on your own, instead of coming to us for help from the start. Worse, the only reason you tried to come to us at all was because whatever it was, was worse than you expected, and you couldn't handle it on your own. Have I got that right?"

"Ralts…" She didn't have to make it sound so bad. It had been a perfectly reasonable plan. The only reason it hadn't worked was because of an unforeseen interaction between the stronger than expected pain and her powers. Besides, we'd had Lucky-tchii to help us.

Curiosity, worry, and accusation spread through the room, focused on Daisy and I. Ah. Fuck. Mistakes were made. Probably shouldn't have dragged attention to the fact that Daisy must have been involved if we had her pokemon with us when we arrived. Judging by the rather impressive facepalm going on, Daisy agreed.

"Leave me out of this for now. To be honest, I kind of agree with her about having Azula tell you herself. As things stand, I'm pretty sure I'm going to be persona non grata with you all by the time this is over. All I have to say is that I did what I thought was best to keep her safe, and that I felt a different course of action would lead to much a worse situation. I did my best to make sure she wouldn't get worse. Judging by the fact she's here as she is, things went nearly as well as they could have."

 _Alarm_.

"What do you mean 'nearly as well as they could have'?!"

"It was the Haunter licks, wasn't it? Or a side effect of them."

 _Terror_.

Fuck. Way to go traitor. You've barely said a word since you found out about those and you choose now to speak up. Seriously. Now I had to clear the air about that because our mothers looked like they might throw up, or cry, or start yelling, or something.

"Ralts."

Judging by the ashen complexion on their faces, my explanation hadn't done much to make them feel better, but at least now they weren't actively thinking their youngest daughter was about to die. Now they just had to deal with the fact said daughter had come so close to dying that she'd been clinically dead a few times before she stabilized. Progress, sort of. She hadn't come out of the whole Haunter debacle unscathed, fucking not at all, especially if you counted the dependence to morphine as coming from that, but at least she was going to be fine now. Wait. Idea.

"Ralts."

Perfect. Deflect attention from us by pointing out what the traitor had done. Little Sis would be so proud of me. Now everyone was frowning at him, and the looks on their faces were getting angrier by the second. The ensuing shouting match lasted long enough to let me sneak out. Right, I'd feel bad for the traitor, but he'd created the abomination binding Little Sis' power. He deserved whatever he got. When the fighting continued for two days without any sign of stopping, I couldn't help thinking that perhaps I'd miscalculated. At least the traitor acknowledged what a terribly fucking stupid idea creating those things had been. If the Rockets ever got their hands on the technology… It could never be allowed.

Which led to my current course of action. I grabbed Porygon, and uploaded him into the compound's network through the pokedex's authenticated connection. That little exploit made everything so much easier. No need to worry about how to get through what must be ridiculously overpowered defenses when you could have them let you walk in through the front door. Our sneaky little AI hijacked the traitor's supercomputer and turned it to searching for all information about the abomination. Before long, we had everything. Psionic Suppression Choker, and Neural Dampeners. Even what little I could read about the specs was horrible. Porygon understood more of it, and I had it download everything before thoroughly deleting the files, wrecking the hard drives they'd been stored in, and finishing by leaving a programmed reboot of the whole network. There would be no trace left of those things anywhere but in Porygon. We'd reverse engineer them later so we could learn to counter them if we had to.

I walked to the kitchen from the traitor's main lab, Porygon's pokeball floating beside me. The kitchen was rather fuller than I'd expected though. Everyone was there. But if everyone was in the kitchen, then who was with Little Sis? The sudden spike of terror and pain that blasted through our bond, which had been completely silent since the traitor had locked her power, told me that the answer was probably "no one we want there". Pain meant she was hurt. She needed Lucky-tchii. I Teleported to her, and then the fear and pain Little Sis was feeling washed over the whole house and not just through our bond. We Teleported in to the smell of burned meat, and saw her writhing in pain, burns cutting through the Neural Dampeners and a horrible burned hole over the side of her throat showing where she'd burned through the choker.

Lucky-tchii sprang into action, three eggs flowing over the burns in an instant. Our full bond established itself once again and information flowed through our mind. Oh. Oh Little Sis. I held her hand as she was slowly pulled back into unconsciousness by Lucky-tchii's soft singing, drawing comfort from my presence, from the knowledge that she was safe, that I was safe, and I would watch over her. She'd almost died again, all because of the abominations the traitor had put on her. When the rest of the family ran in, I seized the advantage of surprise, smacking the traitor into the wall with a weak Psychic, Teleporting on top of him and destroying any mental defenses he might have had.

There would be no trace left of that accursed technology outside of our control, not even in his mind, nor would he be allowed to try to recreate it. A moment of frozen eternity passed, and Mama had ripped me away from him, confused and terrified over everything that had happened. That was fine, it had been enough time. Our command had rooted itself deep in his mind and soul, and nothing was left of his knowledge or memories of the abominations. Good. Whatever else happened, whatever I needed to to do, Little Sis would be made safe, and if I had to help her burn the world down and remake it in her image to make it safe then so be it.


	44. The Path 30

I awoke to a fully new experience. Well, okay, the horrible pain wasn't new, and I guess the waking up in a medical facility thing wasn't also fully new, but as Luna communicated to me not long after waking, this was a full on big city hospital and not some dinky town clinic. We were, apparently, in Viridian City Hospital, the city's biggest hospital, receiving the very best medical care my family's combined money and reputation could buy. I was also still receiving medical care, which was actually a fully new experience, given that at Lavender I'd woken days after I'd stopped needing active care beyond maintenance of my unconscious body. Though, for as much that we liked new experiences, this was one I did not care to repeat.

Still, according to what Luna had seen and heard, I now had a rather nasty cross-shaped scar on the left side of my neck and, at least for the moment, an artificially paralyzed larynx to keep me from accidentally making things worse. How the fuck had they managed that? Still, I appreciated not needing to be kept unconscious the whole time I healed. Not like we could get bored when we had two bodies to do things with, and this way I could start working out what fuck had happened. Obviously something somewhere had gone wrong, and this time we couldn't just escape and hope no one identified us.

Our bond reformed and Luna sent over the details of our current situation. Things hadn't gone to plan and I'd insisted on asking our mothers for help. Well, fuck. Everything was so fuzzy, and I couldn't remember much beyond a lot of unpleasant feelings and slight impressions. A small effort showed me there were memories of the missing time, but they were suppressed. Double fuck. How bad had it been? A memory from Luna showed me lying in bed, writhing in pain, three frankly horrible burns along the sides of my head and neck. Yeah, that looked like it sucked.

Apparently having a hole burned through your throat causes all sorts of nasty little issues that are hard to heal even with the rather ridiculous medical technology they had here. Who knew the larynx was so delicate? At least the burns on the sides of my head hadn't fried my brain, even if there was a significant chance of permanent damage to my voice and lungs. The doctors were still trying to assess the extent of my injuries and how much of it could be repaired. We had to get something really nice for Lucky-tchii and Daisy, because if what the doctors had said was right, the family pink blob of love and sweetness was the only reason things hadn't been worse.

"She's going to be okay loves. Azula's strong, and she's young. She'll bounce back in no time. She survived a Haunter swarm, somehow, this will be nothing in comparison."

Wait, Haunter swarm? The fuck had I missed? How the fuck did they know about that?! Ah, father had blabbed when they were questioning Big Little Sis, and wow, wasn't that an impressive hate boner. What the fuck had father done? It couldn't have been just because he talked. I needed to recover those memories, but Big Little Sis insisted that I wait until I was healed and released from the hospital before opening up that mess.

"But she could be mute!"

We fucking hoped not. We liked my voice, and we liked talking to our mothers and Marina and Daisy. I tried looking ahead, to see if maybe the future could shed some light into that doubt, but the future was turbulent and indistinct. That… only happened when we'd done something directly connected to the future we wanted to see, which said all kinds of disturbing things about the repressed memories. Big Little Sis was insistent that we wait though, she didn't want me to hurt myself if I reacted badly. Well, more badly than she expected me to react already. Plus side, I couldn't tell my mothers something I didn't remember, or have to lie about it! There was already so much we'd have to tell them, one less thing was always good. Hopefully Mom would be the comforting pillar of reason that she usually was and help make them feel better.

"At least she's psychic?"

Or not. Damn. It was always like that, she either made things better or tried making a joke and failed. This was going to be awkward. Maybe we could fake being asleep and nevermind, Gardemom had already sensed both halves of us were awake and she'd rushed inside with Mama and Mom following behind her. Fuck. We were not ready.

 _Concern. Fear. Relief. Joy._

We felt her hands on my right hand, then Mama joined in, and then Mom. There were a lot of tears falling. I felt pretty fucking guilty. I'd ended up hurting them anyway, just in a different, if admittedly unexpected, way and we hadn't even gotten around to telling them anything yet. Damnit all.

"We were so worried about you pumpkin. Please don't scare us like that again."

"Ra-Ralts."

"You must clearly be feeling okay if you're being a smartass."

Judging by their expressions and the feelings coming from them, telling your distraught mothers not to worry, that you're totally fine and that you're barely getting started on the crazy things you plan on doing isn't a good icebreaker. Who could have known?

"Ralts."

Maintaining our cavalier devil may care attitude was remarkably difficult in the face of our mothers' love and concern. We had an image to maintain, damnit! And yet here we were, apologizing. We were totally not pouting.

"Don't pout."

"Ralts!" We were not!

"Sure you weren't, baby girls. Now, how are you feeling Azula?"

"Ralts."

Terrible pain, horrible cold, general discomfort, hunger, a terrible craving for a fucking hit of morphine. Really any sort of comfort would do at this point. Though we made sure not to mention the bit about the morphine. I'd rather keep that one to ourselves for now, until they were less worried. No need to pile on more problems on them. Better pace things out, keep them from being too overwhelmed.

"We can get a doctor to give you some painkillers if it..."

Big Little Sis' response was emphatic, though I'll admit mine wasn't quite as strong as hers. I wanted to say yes, to give in and let the pain fade away in a blissful rush of warmth, I wanted that so much. I almost wanted to cry. Something about my inner struggle must have shown on my face or emotions, because they all looked pretty concerned about the whole thing.

But I knew what my response had to be.

 _No._

"Are you sure?"

 _No painkillers._

Yeah. They were suspicious now, Mom especially. We could practically feel her thoughts going down a path we didn't want them her to consider yet. Dread was clawing up her insides. She was law enforcement, she had to know what withdrawal was like, what someone acted like when high as a kite. They'd thought something was odd about me when we came back home, the horrible nightmares and low energy weren't normal for me. Probably about the only reason I'd skated by was because who would seriously expect a ten year old to have a drug problem?

"Baby?" Mom's voice was weak, trembling with fear and pain.

 _Later, please._

"Ralts." After everything that had happened, we just wanted a day with our mothers. The specialist doctor in charge of making sure my fleshy insides were healing well, as well as correcting any errors in said healing, dropped by to check on me. I'd been dreading having a camera shoved into my mouth and down my throat, but apparently they had better options here. Fucking yay for advanced technology and real time 3D imaging without the need for big unwieldy machines. Seriously, dude just had this device on wheels with a nice big screen rolled in, and waved a wand over my throat and my chest.

"You're healing as well as can be expected given your circumstances, Miss Sato." He settled the wand over my chest and gestured at the screen. There was something in his expression we couldn't quite figure out. "The primary points of interest are the scarring on the inside of your lungs, and the damage to your larynx."

"You're very lucky, young lady. As early as ten years ago the damage to your lungs could have turned into a slow death sentence. Now, it's not certain that it would have, but the damage was extensive, and that increased the chance." Oh, oh my. That's an interesting feeling. Utter terror and immeasurable relief at the same time, especially when felt by literally everyone in the room. "We'll monitor the situation over the next few months, during which you'll need to take medication just in case. If our fears are unfounded then you'll be in the clear, if not, then you'll have to take medication for the rest of your life. Unfortunate, but I figure you'd rather that than a slow death. It shouldn't affect your quality of life any more than the initial loss of pulmonary function you've already suffered, but of course, we'll have to wait and see. All of this, of course, only if you're diligent about keeping up with the medication you'll be prescribed."

"We'll make sure of it doctor." / "Ralts!" / _**Acquiescence.**_

Yeah, pretty sure we'd all be very keen to follow the good doctor's orders if it kept me alive. Still, I had a very fucking important question.

"Ralts."

"It shouldn't affect your viability as a trainer too much, so long as you make sure to check in with a doctor at least once a month to make sure the exertion of traveling doesn't cause issues or overwhelm the effects of the medication. I'm afraid the damage to your larynx might be a bigger issue with regards to your abilities as a trainer, since there's a chance your voice box might might not be up to the task of shouting commands anymore. You'll likely have problems speaking for long periods of time, both from pain and from weakness of the associated muscles."

Oh, good, nothing of too much consequence from that angle, at least. I was alive, and that meant we could continue our quest, and maybe hunt a legendary that could heal me completely. After all, the hardest part would probably be finding it. Still, we'd need to find a way to talk with Marina in the meantime.

"You should be ready to be discharged as early as the day after tomorrow." Ecstatic happy hugs and tears all around. "You'll be instructed as to how to take care of yourself in light of your injuries before you leave."

He left not much later after answering some questions from our mothers. We mostly concerned ourselves with basking in their presence and planning our next moves. I wondered, why was father not here as well? And wow, sis, that's one massive fucking hate boner you got going on there, what the fuck. This was the second time. What the hell had I forgotten in those repressed memories? Probably very bad things, if Big Little Sis' feelings on the matter were anything to go by.

By an unspoken accord we all kept to light topics during the next two days, putting off talking about the pink donphan dancing around us, but we could only put off talking about things for so long. Eventually we'd need to talk. Hopefully it could be put off for long enough for my voice to be sufficiently healed that I could speak . It was all rather anxiety inducing if we were being honest, it made me itch for morphine. Hopefully the urge would decrease with time. I was thankful to have sis with me, I wasn't sure I would have managed to hold off with such easy access until I was discharged, not without her support.

As things stood, we were certain Mom had already figured it out given my rather strained reactions any time I was asked if I was in pain or needed anything. I wasn't sure how to feel about the feelings coming from her, and we were fairly sure our other mothers had noticed something going on with her. She felt so much pain for us, such compassion. It hurt.

We Teleported home once I was discharged. The small flare of pain from the mostly healed soul wound did not go unnoticed though, which was bad but manageable. We had been to speak as often as possible, but to stop at the first sign of pain until all soreness receded. There'd been a few breathing exercises too, but that was easy. We may not meditate often anymore, but we spent most of our lives up until we left for our journey meditating to improve our phenomenal cosmic power. It'd worked pretty well, we thought, given we were obscenely powerful and others weren't.

Daisy ran up to us and hugged us as soon as she saw we were home. We hugged her back. We'd missed her. Our mothers took this as an invitation to start a group hug and then that day was pretty much over because no one wanted to end it. I tried speaking for the first time since I awoken. It was rough and scratchy, a far cry from the voice we were used to and one that instantly brought down the mood a little when they first heard it, but the words made up for it. No one else must ever learn of this, it would destroy our image. I could already hear the calls of "Mama's girl" if it got out.

"Love you Daisy. Love you moms. I'm sorry." For causing you pain, for disappointing you, for so many things.


	45. The Path 31

I awoke in my bed, my sister curled up to me and my arms around her. Huh. Group hug girl's night. That had been amazingly cathartic. We had totally not cried because we'd missed our mothers or because being surrounded by so many people had actually managed to beat back the cold. Good way to distract myself from the pain too. I disentangled myself from her and went to put on my jacket so I could go get breakfast and wait… I didn't need to hide the scars anymore, did I? Right then, I grabbed my sister, guess I was carrying her to the kitchen in my arms and not her usual spot.

Just as well, I actually liked my scars. They were all still an angry red, but even so, I liked them, and to a degree was proud of them. We'd survived were others would have died. Well, the ones on my arm. I wasn't sure how the new one on my neck had come about yet, and sis insisted on me waiting before finding out. Given that she was usually the more levelheaded of the two of us I went with her suggestion, but I was seriously getting some bad vibes about the whole thing.

I found father in the kitchen, looking frankly horrible. Like holy shit, poor guy looked like he hadn't slept for a week, or showered, or eaten. He looked completely miserable. Even asleep, sis' hatred towards him was strong. It was hard to see him, and it was hard to see him like this. And he was drinking. I checked my poketch, 8:24 AM. Looking into the future showed nothing but indistinct shadows. Damn. His back was to us, so he didn't notice me walking up to him, or me setting sis down on a chair beside him. He did notice when I hugged him, and he was more than a little surprised. He kinda jumped in his seat. Yay for ninja stealth skills.

"I thought we'd tal… talked about t… this, father. You really... shouldn't be drinking s… so much, it worries me." It was a little demoralizing to hear my own voice sound so rough, so different. I felt like that one villain from those space movies from my past life, Darth Vader or something. Speaking was hard, it seemed like my voice gave out after a few words, and saying that much had already made my throat sore. The biggest takeaway though was his reaction to hearing my voice. He went from despondent to utterly crushed and depressed. He turned to me so quickly it startled me, hugging me, crying, and muttering apologies. I tried to comfort him as best I could, but every time I tried speaking he got worse. Eventually, I settled for sending him comforting emotions and meaning directly into his mind. He felt responsible, guilty even, for what had happened to me, but why?

Sis woke up around then, and father flinched from the hate coming off from her when she saw him. I could feel her struggling to reign in her emotions, and so I did for her what she usually did for me. I dove into her mind and pushed down her anger, her fear, it was hard, and I didn't manage to fully rearrange them, but it helped a great deal. She was now merely slightly annoyed at him. Progress. We couldn't properly deal with this until I remembered whatever the fuck it was I was forgetting. Father wanted to leave now, and we had a feeling he was going to drown his sorrows. Fucking hell. How the fuck did things get to this? Besides being a horrible cunt to him, of course, this seemed like a little more than just that.

"Please take care of… yourself."

He hugged me harder for a moment, before leaving. We had to fix that. It hurt to see him like that, and to do so I would need to remember so I could know what the issue was. Information passed between sis and I, and we settled on a time. After we spoke to our mothers about the morphine. Big Little Sis felt I should have their support for this, and wasn't that ominous as fuck.

Enough of heavy things for now. It was time to make breakfast with our phenomenal cosmic powers. What to make? Something soft would be best. Fried eggs, and maybe a huge mug of chocolate. Wonder what kind of pokemon laid the eggs we ate. We'd do some training with our pokemon after. It felt weird not to train, even if we were fresh out of the hospital. We finished our food and grabbed some snacks for our other pokemon, then passed through our room to pick up the rest of our team.

We sat down on a rock near the river that ran through the compound's grounds. Yeah, this was pretty fucking nice. Rushing river, pleasant breeze, cloudy skies, fucking perfect day out. Only way it could be better would be if we had a smart device and we could browse reddit, or watch videos, or fuck about on forums. Oh, we could invent conspiracy theories! We definitely needed to speed up the internet's development here. Zeus and Sozin went at each other as best they could what with still being at their first stage, and the rest of our pokemon had a nice free for all a little bit away from us. Hopefully my lungs would be well enough that I could train with Zeus when he evolved. What best way to improve my middling fighting skills and firebending than to train with one of the best fighting and fire type pokemon in the world?

We'd been outside for a couple hours when Mama sat down beside us and hugged us to her. We cuddled up to her. We sat like that for a few minutes, us silently directing our pokemon, and Mom watching. She took a deep breath and kissed the top of my head, then she put a bottle of pills in front my face. Ah. Damn. First day out and I'd already forgotten. I fished a pill out and downed it dry. At least we had experience with that.

"I love you baby girls, so much. We all love you. Please know that you can talk to us about anything, okay? We're here for you."

"I don't want… to worry you." There wasn't any energy left to the protest anymore, really, it was pretty much pro forma. We'd already decided to talk to them. They knew there was a problem now, and not talking would _be_ hurting them, likely a lot more than simply biting the bullet and telling them the truth, especially Mama. Wouldn't want her insecurities to resurface. More than they probably already would, given how much we'd kept secret.

"We're your mothers, baby girl. It's our job to worry about you."

That… They were, weren't they, and it was, wasn't it? I'd never thought about it like that. We were so used to doing everything on our own, relying exclusively on ourselves and our abilities. My past life had been like that too, nearly incapable of asking for help, and unused to having family that not only wanted to help, but also cared enough to actually make an effort to help. It felt weird, so very weird. It began to occur to us that we may have issues and deficiencies on the subject of asking for help. And trusting people with our problems. And a bunch of other things.

"I know it may be tough, you have all these memories… But please, talk to us?"

All these memories? What…

"You- You know. How do you know?"

"Pumpkin, you didn't exactly make much of an effort to hide it. We didn't know for sure until Oak visited, but well, we had theories about it for a while before that."

"Oh." Well, fuck. Obviously they didn't think I was some sort of evil spirit possessing their poor daughter or something asinine like that, so at least there was that. I wasn't sure how to feel about our mothers knowing about my past life though. It was kind of a private thing.

"We're waiting for… my voice to get a little... better."

"We'll be here for you as long as it takes, pumpkin." We spent a few hours like that, before heading back in for lunch. We were going to break her heart with what we had to say, I just knew it.

It took about a week for my voice to strengthen up until I could get through a whole sentence without it giving out after a few words. Everything was so tense, and dealing with stress was not a thing I did well. Sis helped a lot, keeping me from freaking out or Teleporting out to find morphine with which to check out from all problems surrounding us. On that front, what the utter fuck? How had I gotten so dependant on it and not noticed? At least Zeus had evolved into a Combusken now, which meant I could try to fight him as soon as the doctors gave me the all clear on strenuous activities.

We'd switched our daily calls to Marina for long text message conversations. We hadn't told her why yet, but we'd call her soon, or maybe visit, and tell her. Well, as soon as I knew what had happened. It would be hard to tell her something I didn't know. Not impossible, since I was me and sis knew, but it'd likely be simpler to just remember the repressed memories floating around in my head.

That was all something for later though. Right now we had to deal with coming clean to our family, which was a rather fucking daunting proposition. I was terrified, of what they'd say and what they'd do. Still, the die had been cast, and we'd asked everyone to gather in the dining room. How the fuck was I going to explain things? Maybe we could grab some of father's whisky? Get us some good ol' fashioned liquid courage.

To talk to our mothers and my father about my issues with drug abuse. Yeah, okay, probably not the best of ideas, given that we were fairly certain they would notice we were drunk if we tried. Not to mention it would paint things in a pretty bad light when the video of us illegally acquiring a bottle of wine finally came up. Right. No liquid courage or any other kind of chemical chill enhancers for this conversation. No need to make them think we also had a drinking problem.

The living room was tense, walking to the love seat facing our family felt like walking to an execution. We sat before them, fidgeting while we tried to come up with the words to start things out.

"Things have happened that I should probably have informed you about."


	46. The Path 32

"You know some of them already." Our baby girls' new voice was hard to hear even after a week of doing her best to speak as often as possible. Samuel couldn't even bear to look Azula in the eye, made all the worse by the fact that she didn't seem to remember what had happened, though Luna insisted it was only a matter of time before she did. She was also very insistent that she would need our support when she did.

He remembered very little about the devices he'd made, but he insisted that there was simply no way for them to have malfunctioned the way they had. The destruction of his memories had been thorough, but he was adamant about that. We believed him, mostly because we all knew he would sooner cut off his arms than directly endanger his only daughter in any way. We'd been very clear that inventing devices that negated our daughter's best weapon with which to protect herself was very much indirectly endangering her. He'd already agreed to lock away all data relating to the technology when everything had gone to hell and Luna had done something hasty. I'd known she hated the things, but seeing how much… It was frightening.

"I guess it all started when I got these." She said, gesturing to the red scars on her left arm. She'd stopped wearing her jacket around the house as often. I got the feeling she was proud of them and that she'd hidden them purely for our benefit. She traced them when she was thinking or training her pokemon, fingers dancing over the raised skin. She was doing it right now. "They did so much damage… I felt them bite off chunks of my soul, and the Licks are the second worst thing we've ever felt. Maybe the first. It's hard to judge degrees with things that terrible."

"We've thought about it a little, and honestly, it's no surprise people don't survive being Licked by pokemon of the Gengar line. I almost didn't, and we don't think I could have survived if our psychic abilities were less than what they are, on a few different levels. It's one of the reasons we didn't bother explaining how we did it. It wouldn't help other victims."

She closed her eyes and shuddered, fear and pain spreading over her face. I could see Luna hugging her, comforting her. She hadn't dealt with what had happened to her yet, at least not fully.

"It eats away at the tether between your body and your soul until it dies and then there's nothing connecting the two. Even with this knowledge and power comparable to ours, chances are few would have a soul weird enough to allow them to reconnect it, or a way to force the tie to the physical world, like sis did for me. Though I suppose if they were fast enough they could try revitalizing the connecting point, I didn't get a chance to try that."

"It doesn't really matter. It hurt my powers, that's what matters. I could barely do anything without getting horrible migraines and well, the closest thing I could say would be soul pain. It's hard to explain. I overdid it with them at the Route 11-12 Gate, and I… I took some painkillers from the infirmary there. I didn't bother checking what they were. I just wanted the pain to stop. It hurts so much. It didn't stop the pain, not really, but they helped, made things better, bearable…"

Oh baby girl. It was hard to hear her talk about her own death so matter of factly, to hear that she'd suffered so much. She was hugging Luna now, drawing as much comfort from her as she could. She was trembling, and when she spoke again her voice was angry, angrier than I'd ever seen her.

"By the time I realized what the painkillers had done, I couldn't just stop taking them. We couldn't be sure how long it'd take to stop, what would happen. We couldn't let that stop us from being at the Conference. Our plan was to take more time with it, but then the Suicune we captured tried to kill us, and the pain was so bad. We ran out faster than planned because of that"

She rubbed her throat, likely sore from talking so much. I couldn't think. So much had happened to her in the few months she'd been out in the world, she'd accomplished so much, had nearly died far too many times, and to top it all off she'd done it all while struggling with a drug problem. What do you say to that? What do you do when your daughter tells you that she'd faced off against so many things before she was even a teen? For the first time in her life, I thanked the life and times of the woman she'd been before this one. I had a feeling that it was only the experience and perspective provided by that past life that had let them overcome the hurdles she'd faced as well as she had.

"Sis tells me the pain was too much to contain while also keeping my powers from wrecking the island we picked to detox, her, and my own body. We had a choice to make, and I chose to come to you for help. You know most of the rest, sis knows more, though she's not telling for now."

"What was it that you were taking baby?" Ashley's said from beside me, a pained tone

in her voice. Azula's face twisted into a grimace.

"Morphine."

Oh.

"I need… I need some air. I'll let you guys talk for now."

The room was silent for a few minutes after Azula left. Frankly, after the bombs she'd dropped on us and how hard she'd taken it, she probably really did need it.

"That was not something I was expecting when she asked us here."

"I had my suspicions, but I hoped there was nothing to them. Then again, someone knew." Ashely said, looking at Daisy.

"I… I stand by what I said. This was probably the best way things could have turned out. I made sure she'd check in with me regularly, and I sent Lucky-tchii with her so she could look after her."

"You should have told us as soon as you found out! We could have helped stop using sooner! How long did you know?" Ashely was furious. She'd seen how bad things could get at her old job. Seen the depths of people could sink to when under the influence of drugs like what our baby had been taking. We'd helped her deal when it got to be too much, but I don't think there was a way to help someone deal with "Your ten year old daughter is an addict." Certainly I didn't know how to deal with it.

"I found her out the day before she left to challenge Cinnabar."

"That's… not that long." Ashely slumped into me. "We failed, didn't we? We're terrible parents."

"I don't think there's much that we could have done to keep this from happening. You taught her well, and it's probably the only reason she's alive. She knows how to survive, how to fight. It's almost ridiculous. When I found out about the Haunter swarm… I tried to keep her from leaving again, to stop her from going back out. She wouldn't have any of it. She said things, but it made me realize there's nothing we could have done to keep her safe, not while she has access to her abilities. We couldn't have stopped her from going out even if we tried. She doesn't want to be safe, doesn't care about being safe. She wants to fight, to conquer, she wants power, and there's not a good Arceus damned thing anyone could do to stop her from trying. Not without doing more harm than good." Samuel said, speaking up for the first time since we'd gathered to hear our daughter's story.

"That why you made the suppressor devices." I said, and watched him age years in a second.

"I'd been toying with the idea for some time before, in case her mental state degraded even more. It didn't, she even improved, but after what she said that night… She apologized for the necessity, in her eyes at least, but only that. I don't remember how I made them anymore, but I can only imagine I finished them as a result of that conversation."

 _Irritation_.

 _What's done is done, what will we do now?_

Trust Garde to skip to the point.

"Luna assures us that she has no intention of letting her fall back into it, and that Azula is terrified and hates it as much as it's possible for a person to feel something. The only thing we can really do is support her. Punishing her won't really help anything." Ashely said.

"We'll support her, that's what. Make sure she has no temptation to slide back, keep an eye on her in case she does. We'll call her often if she's away from home."

"We can ask her to stay home for a little bit. She'll probably accept. You saw how much she missed us, and I checked, she's already registered to compete at the Conference. She can train here almost as well as anywhere else, at least until her Torchic and Bagon evolve."

"And we need to get them to trust us more with their issues. A lot of this could have been avoided if she'd just talked to us. It all seems to come back to the bundle of neuroses that came with her past life, which are probably the only thing that gave her the perspective she needed to know she had to stop." Hopefully we could get her to open up to us more.


	47. The Path 33

We trained nonstop until our next doctor's appointment, where they poked and prodded me until they decided that my lungs were in good enough condition to allow for light exercise. I even got some sort of spray for just in case my lungs refused to work properly from too much exertion. Unfortunately, they had also upped the dosage of the pills they'd given me to prevent further damage to them. Guess I was going to take them for the rest of my life or until they invented something better. Hopefully the latter. Or we found a pokemon capable of healing me.

Our mothers had been clingy since we'd come clean to them about things, and if we were being honest, we were really enjoying spending time with them. Sigh. We were huge fucking mamas' girls. They'd been pretty frosty towards Daisy though, despite us coming to her defense. We were doing our best to mend their relationship, and we were pretty sure we'd managed a breakthrough when the story of Daisy's friend and how he'd died came to light. Hopefully things would get better from there. My relationship with father was similarly strained, but things seemed to be getting better between us.

We woke early the day after our doctor's appointment. It was time to fight Zeus. We let out the rest of our team to fight among themselves, and assigning Mai to train Sozin apart from the rest. It wouldn't do to neglect our mini dragon or it would never stop being mini. For now though, I faced off against my fighting rooster while Luna observed from her spot sitting on our usual rock. She counted down, and when she hit zero, Zeus blurred forward, kicking at the spot where my head had been an instant before.

I swung in a vertical spinning kick from the arch I'd bent my back to dodge Zeus' opener. He blocked with his left arm, and I pushed off it in an acrobatic jump assisted by a jet of fire blasting from the sole of my foot. I kept the stream of fire going, throwing my body into a spin and taking the energy from my body's movement to throw fast fireballs at him. He dodged them adroitly, moving only enough to let them pass him by, and then blurring forward to try to kick me as I landed.

I barely managed to time it correctly, but I twisted just enough to springboard off his leg and explode a fireball in his face. I wasn't as fast as him, not even close, so I was limited to throwing more fire at him while he was in the air. He landed and was in front of me again, this time trying to punch my head off. I dodged, and what followed was something straight out of my namesake's world. Dodges, blocks, punches, kicks, all looking like they'd come out of a martial arts demonstration or movie.

It was exhilarating, right up until my arms refused to move fast enough to block a kick and Zeus ragdolled me through the air. Sis caught me before I could hit the floor with so much force, but still, that had fucking hurt and I couldn't breathe. Black started to ring around my vision, and then sis was there, triggering the inhaler I'd been given into my mouth.

Damn. I hadn't even noticed when my lungs had stopped cooperating. I hugged sis to me. That sucked, but at least we now knew I could keep up with a fairly acceptable fighting pokemon for a short period of time. It was going to be fun to bounce around any Rockets stupid enough to try to have a go at me. We sent Zeus to train with Sozin and Mai, while we let my body rest up. Not being able to breathe sucked a lot, and was frankly a little terrifying to feel.

We'd been laying there for half an hour when Mama laid down beside us and hugged us to her side.

"Shouldn't you be paying attention to your pokemon while they train?"

"We are. We don't actually need our eyes to see, you know."

"Oh. Well, okay then. How are you feeling, everything fine?"

"I've been thinking it's time to try remembering what happened that night. Sis agrees."

"Are you sure pumpkin?"

I nodded into her side. There was no point in procrastinating on this. We were pretty sure it was only a matter of time before something triggered the memory on its own, and it would be better if it were to happen under our terms. I dove into my mind, finding the repressed memory easily. I dove into it, and felt the world fall away, then...

Everything was so cold.

The pain was gone, but so was everything else. I couldn't see, could barely feel anything on my skin. I was numb. What'd happened? I tried to expand my senses but there was nothing there. My power wasn't there. My power wasn't there. No. No, no, no. I strained as hard as I could, trying to find it, trying to find Little Big Sis, I found her, barely there, faint, fading slowly away. No. I had to find my power, I couldn't let Luna die. I reached, burning through as much power as I needed to find it.

It was slow going, but when I did find my power it was distant, and completely dormant. There was a wall between my power and I. I was starting to recognize what it was that I was feeling. It was like the Haunter licks, but slower, less immediately lethal. With how much energy I'd used to find my power in the time it'd taken, I'd have been dead already. I pushed at the wall keeping us apart, and I felt something besides the numb cold that had been my world since I woke up, if indeed I was awake. Whenever I pushed at the wall, spots on my temples would warm, as would a band around my neck. I couldn't break it, it was strong and I had barely anything left. I would run out of energy and die trying before whatever the fuck this thing was gave out.

I couldn't die, I wasn't ready, it wasn't time. There was still so much to do, so much of life to live, I couldn't die yet. I had to save my sister, and I couldn't leave my mothers without their daughters. I was fading. I was crying. I wanted to live. I tried to scream, but I could barely breathe. I was desperate. I threw more energy at the wall holding my power, it needed to go down, but all that happened was the spots of heat flared back up. Were they perhaps the source of the wall? I ran my fingers over my neck, I could barely feel anything, but the heat generated when trying to reach my powers made it easier. A choker, and little squares attached to the sides of my head.

I tried pulling them off, but they were stuck to my skin. I couldn't even get my fingers under the choker. These things had to be the problem. Could I short circuit them? No, too much of a risk. Lightning was hard. Easy to mess up and easy to lose control over it. Something that close to me, stuck to my skin? I'd end up electrocuting myself if I tried. I could burn them off… They weren't over major blood vessels, well, part of the choker was, but the front end wasn't. Hopefully I wouldn't fry my brain in doing so. Best if I stacked the deck on that front. A very intense but short and concentrated burst of fire. Right, I was going to have to do a finger lightsaber impression. Great. Not like I was dying, nearly insensate, low on juice, and terrified.

Everything was so faint. I could barely think. Was I breathing? I had to live. I couldn't die.

Energy gathered at the tip of my index fingers, what little I had left, and then the strongest flames I'd ever made burned the devices blocking my power. It hurt, even through the cold and numbness, a terrible burning agony, but I felt as much of my power broke free, and _Life_ flowed into my body. I felt my sister not too far from me, still a little faint, but alive and healthy, felt _Life_ come from her and burn away the cold. One left. Fire and agony bloomed again, and I was free. Luna Teleported to me, my sister was safe, with me. All would be right with the world now. Our bond was made whole again, and information passed between us. Everything hurt so much. Breathing hurt, crying hurt, but Luna held my hand, and everything would be okay.

"Please be okay baby girl. Please wake up. I need you to be okay."

I felt someone shaking me, pulling me away from the strength of the memory, away from the cold, from the pain, and the terror. I wasn't numb. My powers weren't gone. I wasn't going to die. Sis wasn't gone. Things would be okay. Things were already okay. I was lightheaded, felt tears sliding down my cheeks.

"You need to breathe slower pumpkin. Come on, it's okay, we got you."

Mama.

"Ralts!"

Sis.

I was safe with them. Things would be okay. I could trust them. I let myself sink into darkness. They'd make sure everything was okay.


	48. Conquest 1

We hid our presence perfectly. It was trick we would have never thought of if not for the memory of what it felt like to be so completely and utterly separated from my power while also being so close to dying. Our future sight had finally given us the all clear to approach Saffron City without causing a massive fucking headache and we planned to profit immensely from our visit. Problem was, of course, that Sabrina lived there and she was possibly strong enough a psychic to be an equal to one of us. We didn't care for anyone knowing our business, so we were going to do this ninja style and then after we were done we'd visit the city officially.

We waited until it was late night to sneak into the city, disguised in dark clothing, a mask, and a hood. We'd even painted over sis' natural coloration, though we weren't planning on letting her be seen at all. If all went according to plan, she would have no need to come out from the backpack we were carrying. Mai and Ty Lee had scouted the Silph Co. building and confirmed the presence of an extremely heavy Team Rocket presence, far in excess of what my vague memories said should have been there. Seems our attack on the Game Corner base had caused them reinforce this operation. Not like it'd make a difference.

That was fine, it simply meant this one would be a target rich environment. We'd taken the time to label every single person in the building, ranging from "Necessary Collateral Damage" to "Important Skill Acquisition Target". Honestly, most of the people working for the company were off limits, but a couple of the top scientist were Rocket loyalists, and the Rockets had brought in a few of their own R&D staff. We were fairly certain they would be enough to let us skip a decade or two of higher education in our bid to design ourselves a smart device worth the name, especially since we had access to a Porygon to really make it smart. Maybe we could even design an upgrade package for our AI to get it to evolve ahead of the release of the official Porygon Up-Grade.

Grabbing them all would be difficult without throwing the whole building into a frenzy, but one of their software engineers was very conveniently all by himself in the 9th floor, and it occurred to us that he likely had all sorts of access to the company network. There were no security cameras in the room he was in. It was simply a matter of having Luna project a psionic suppression field like the one Gardemom had used so long ago to keep us from finding out who my father was ahead of time. We positioned Mai in place to act as a homing beacon, and we Teleported behind the man, telekinetically sending a needle coated in the soporific Misao Kirk had tried to use on us into his neck. Then we Teleported out to our island with him along for the ride.

Pulling all of the knowledge from his mind was surprisingly easy, even when taking care not to let any of his being sneak into us. How had the ninja bitch managed to parasitize our souls? Maybe being drunk had made it a lot easier? An hour later and the entirety of Edward Slate's higher education was gone. He was even alive and mostly unharmed! Sure, there were big chunks of his soul missing, but they'd heal. Probably. Huh. We hadn't counted on that. The man was horrible, and had done a fair number nasty things throughout his life. Extortion, blackmail, rape, and more. We didn't want to let him live, so we drew our knife, and slit his throat.

We Teleported back to Silph Co. and uploaded our Porygon into their network, armed with our latest victim's credentials. They had their own Porygons defending the network, but they had no reason to act against mine. After all, it had all of the right passwords to guarantee access, it was practically one of theirs. It looped security monitors, turned off all cameras, and disabled all sensors. Then we grabbed the last four targets and spent the next four hours ripping their knowledge out of their heads. None survived. It seemed Edward Slate's soul had been made of sterner stuff than the average.

We burned the bodies and dropped them deep in the Viridian Forest. Now it was time to finish dealing with the Rocket infestation in the Silph Co. building. We walked in through the front door this time, and let Ty Lee and Mai loose. Suffer not a fucking dumb idiot Team Rocket member to live. Halfway through the third floor our ghosts returned to us with chunks of souls for us to eat. Which was decidedly weird, since we hadn't asked them to, but it felt wrong not to accept their gift. We gave a third of it to Ozai, since we couldn't let him out to feast. He was too recognizable and there would be a lot of survivors who could blab about our pet eldritch abomination participating in a massacre.

It wasn't until the tenth floor that they encountered real resistance. Someone had released pokemon strong enough to challenge our ghosts. That was unexpected. We Teleported into the room in time to see a fairly average looking Nidoking and a Nidoqueen taller than our Gengars bash Ty Lee into a puddle of gas. Behind them stood a tall man dressed in a dark suit. His hair was cut short, and he had a look of rage upon his face that turned even nastier when he saw us. When the fuck had this guy gotten here?

"You… You must be the one who razed my operation in Celadon." An ugly smile spread across his lips. "I'm going to enjoy making you pay for that. You two, kill them."

I reached for Starmie, fucking damnit, still needed a name, and started a game of don't get killed by huge poison monsters intent on doing me harm while our pokemon tried kill them back. Mai played defense, intercepting their attempts on my life while Starmie bombarded them with Hydro Pumps and Psychics. When Starmie managed to knock the Nidoking through the walls of the building and out into the air above the street, it gave us a chance to flip over the Nidoqueen and put our knife into Giovanni Vittore's side.

His reaction was instantaneous, a hand grabbing our neck with crushing strength and the other stopping our left arm on its way to stab him again. We struggled in his grip, but he was apparently a very fit middle aged man and my body was that of a very physically unimpressive ten year old. A slightly to mildly crippled ten year old even. It felt like my throat would give out under his hand any second now, and my lungs burned and spasmed, trying and failing to get me the air I needed.

"Stupid child. Die."

No. I couldn't die. I wouldn't die. It wasn't the time. No no no no no. We slammed a Psychic into his elbow, and the force had him throw us to the side when he lost his grip. He screamed in pain, cursing at us, before taking a running leap out of the hole his Nidoking had made. The flash of a pokemon being released came from outside, and then the Nidoqueen was recalled. Our pokemon tried to give chase, but by the time they made it out, Giovanni was halfway to the city limits in the back of a Pidgeot. Fuck. That hadn't gone as planned. Next time the Rocket Boss was dead.

We extracted Porygon from the Silph Co. network, coughing non stop all the while. My lungs and throat were in agony. We Teleported out to our island, taking a hit from my inhaler once we were safely home. We needed rest, and we crashed into the bed in our little cabin, we barely managed to muster the energy to open the backpack sis was in so she could crawl out. We were going to have to visit my doctor tomorrow. Coughing blood meant Giovanni had managed to do actual damage, or that the subsequent violent coughing had. Thankfully the bleeding had stopped before long, so it wasn't an emergency, and our future sight seemed to agree.

Sleep came quickly, comforted by the knowledge that our ghosts were looking after us.


	49. Conquest 2

Fire and blood. We knew that line from somewhere, we couldn't remember from where, but it was practically the tagline of our lives since we left for our journey. Well, less fire and more destruction, but the point stood. Fucking seriously, it was one shit heap after another. Rockets, Haunters, dying a couple times, drug addiction, another Rocket, even more Rockets, an assassination attempt by a legendary pokemon, horribly horrible detox, another near death experience, a light case of permanent laryngeal and lung damage, and then horrible psychological trauma. Fucking what could be next? At least my usual doctor in Viridian had said there should be no lasting damage from getting manhandled by the throat when we botched the last part of the Silph Co. operation.

We needed to integrate our different capabilities into a cohesive and all encompassion combat style. Giovanni should have never escaped alive or with his free will. We could have killed him a dozen different ways without having to even get close him, much less the many other ways we should have considered when we were up close. We couldn't let ourselves fall into a single box at any time when dealing with problems. We were psychics, ninjas, thieves, blood knights, killers, saboteurs, and much more, always all of them, not just one or two at a time. We'd fallen too far into acting like a ninja and when presented with a problem had reacted just like one, even though exploding Giovanni's head with a Psychic would have been easier than trying to stab him. We'd work on it.

Our current accommodations were far from the luxury we'd grown up accustomed to, but at least phenomenal cosmic powers helped blunt the edges of essentially living in a hastily built shack with nearly no modern amenities. I wasn't ready to go back to the compound yet, no matter how much we missed Daisy and our mothers, or how much they wanted us back. Father was there. We were even putting off building our next, next, next generation smart device because we didn't really have access to his labs if I wasn't willing to be anywhere near him. Intellectually we knew I was being irrational, but what he'd done, even if he'd done so unknowingly… I needed time.

Sis hugged me, trying to stop another downward spiral before it had a chance to really get going. I could feel her in my head, which was probably unhealthy, but given that I was literally incapable of surviving without her, we figured what was one more minor issue that we would never realistically be capable of having to deal with. Hell, sis could literally not ever go into a pokeball again without risking me dropping dead the instant her psychic powers stopped existing in a coherent state. We'd already disabled her pokeball's recall, release, and storage mechanisms in such a way it was impossible to tell without tinkering with it, or repair them. Wouldn't want some good samaritan to recall her in the interest of public safety if she ever had another little fit like when she'd attacked father.

We still weren't sure how the fuck we'd managed what we had though, and running experiments wasn't exactly possible. You know, since psychics were rare, strong psychics were rarer still, and we weren't sure we were quite ready to go full Mengele on this bitch. We were reprehensible soul eating abominations with an impressive body count, but even we had limits. At least we could observe our own souls and those of our other pokemon, and hypothesize. Which we did, a lot.

Apparently a normal looking soul is as ours had been before all the shit we'd put them through: A beautiful structure of lights stretching down into the material world from some weird as fuck place that wasn't reality. Well, minus the chunks missing from mine when I first saw it. Still, the point stood. Our souls now looked odd, still beautiful, but weird. They reminded us a little of Ozai to be honest, all eldritch abomination-y and stuff. The points where mine tethered to hers and hers to my body were especially fascinating. It was like crossing from one space that wasn't reality to a completely different place that was also not reality. We were pretty sure we could learn to give Hoopa an inferiority complex if we studied that phenomenon enough.

We also couldn't forget the rough edges from where Haunters had bitten chunks out of mine, and the ones from where I'd cut out the parasite that was Misao Kirk. It led us to the unhelpful but amusing conclusion that souls were bullshit, especially when you considered that the bitch's parasitic soul had been divided between ours and yet was still a singular entity. We'd come to the conclusion the clumsiness we'd acquired after the Haunter attack was because of the delay caused by the relay between my soul and my body through Tiny Big Sis.

We were also fairly certain we'd identified the reason why I was always so fucking cold. The dead connector point was still there in my soul, leaking freezing cold, and was now fully encased by points of light that led to the new connector points. We'd tried removing it, but the increased size and "weight" of my soul from eating other souls had done to me what it had done to Ozai and entrenched the dead bit inside living bits. In other words, I was screwed on that front too, but at least all we needed to do to mitigate it was to be near other living beings.

Ah well, at least I wasn't about to have a breakdown anymore. Maybe we should follow it up with a good old rousing spot of fighting our fire rooster, just to be sure, then a call to Marina, and finish it up with calling our mothers and Daisy. Maybe if we exhausted my body enough, if we distracted ourselves enough, I'd stop remembering the worst of my near death experiences in my nightmares. We were going to postpone visiting Saffron again though. It occurred to us that visisting a possibly still slightly unstable psychic, who may or may not take offense to our consumption of souls, while in a vulnerable mental state, might be a terrible idea. Paranoid? Us? Preposterous.

It took two weeks in our shack, spent digesting the knowledge we'd stolen from Team Rocket, suffering nightmares, and generally missing our family before we gave in and decided to confront my new fear of father. We weren't quite sure I had it in me to actually be in the same room as him yet, but we could try for the same roof. It almost seemed like I was collecting phobias. Arachnophobia, thanatophobia… was there a name for a phobia of your own father? Patriphobia? Ugh. Maybe we should dig into our big jar o' weed and see if it was enough to chill me the fuck out. We gathered our things and Teleported to our room. May as well get things over with.

Our senses spread over the compound in an instant, and we felt mom in the primary security office, father in his main lab, and Daisy in the dining room. Wonder where our other mothers were? We headed for one of father's empty labs for now. We didn't feel like talking to anyone in person yet. Not after the breakdown I'd had after waking up from remembering my self-mutilation. Or the one after sis filled me in on the rest of the story. Or the one when I woke up to father leaning over me trying to wake me from a nightmare. Point was, it hadn't been good times for anyone.

Right then, time to start manufacturing of the prototype we'd been designing in our head for the last couple weeks. An unholy fusion of an iPhone and an Android phone. I could already feel the hate coming from millions upon millions of fanboys of both brands coming from the world where my first life had lived. The design and user interface of one, with the adaptability and customizability of the other. Coupled with the bullshit technology we had at our disposal and our creation would be the height of technological perfection.

And no, there was no maniacal cackling, no matter what anyone who might have seen or heard us might have had to say on the matter. We levitated various tools and materials in front of us and got to work. Fucking perfection, honestly, this was fun. A few hours later had a completed motherboard and touch screen attached. We connected the combined phone, pokedex, and computer to the lab's mainframe, and uploaded Porygon into it. We'd get our little AI that could to use the ridiculous processing power of the supercomputer to cheat its way through making the OS. After all, it was going to be its new home, we had to make sure it was comfortable and optimized for AI bullshit. A little direction here and there to achieve the desired traits, and we'd have something amazing in no time. Well, several hours if what Porygon said was right, but the point stood.

We stood and stretched, that had been surprisingly entertaining. We were going to have to tinker more later. We turned and jumped when we saw Mom sitting on one of the work tables watching us with a smile on her face. Said smile turned into a grin at our reaction. Mean. We still hugged her though.

"So, baby, you've got quite the laugh there. You'd make for a perfect mad scientist."

What?

"How…?"

"Security cameras."

"Oh." We were not blushing.

"Come on baby girls, let's go get something to eat. Oak's going to be holed up in his lab for a few hours and we can have the kitchen all to ourselves. We'll make something good."

The mention of my father caused a slight twitch that our mom did not miss, and we tried very hard to ignore the look of sympathy she gave me. We'd get over it, eventually, even if we had to use classical conditioning to make it stick. Worst case scenario we'd go for heavy duty psychic surgery and make me get over it, but we were pretty sure we'd manage without resorting to such extreme options. Yes, we were being more open with our mothers, and talking with them helped a lot on those first days after remembering, but there was only so much they could do. At least we could hug them now.


	50. Conquest 3

Testing a new device is both fun and annoying. Fun because we now finally had a media player and so much more, and annoying because bugs kept cropping up. Some that were quickly resolved on the fly by Porygon, and others that had me opening up the casing we'd made and messing around with the internals. Once we'd even messed around with the internals without removing the casing.

Of course, one of the first things we did once we were satisfied with the… What would we call it? We'd have to think on it for now. We'd commandeered a couple of father's unused servers and set up the infrastructure for a video streaming service. By which we meant we'd had Porygon do the coding while we directed it on what to do. We hoped to pretty much invent Youtube, and I could already see the thousands of cat pokemon videos, all monetized. It would be glorious. Maybe the quality of the average trainer would rise when trainer Youtubers started appearing and giving tips on how to fail less at trying to be a pokemon master or something. We'd hopefully have a bit more of a challenge that way.

It occurred to us we should probably train the rest of our pokemon too. We'd lost perspective again. Too focused on training the one team of pokemon and ignoring the rest of the overpowered murder monsters we had at our disposal. For all that Tyranitar was terribly vulnerable to Fighting types, it was still a fuck huge indestructible engine of destruction, especially if we got our hands on a compatible Mega Stone. Same for a Dragonite. Kinglers were cool too, even if they weren't on the same level as the others. Also, one could never have enough shadow Gengars.

We had an idea for at least one of those too. Why kill Giovanni's body when we could experiment with possession? We definitely needed to see if we could have a Gengar eat him from the inside out and leave us in control of the leader of Team Rocket. We'd start with a few grunts as proof of concept, and then we would control the head of the organization. We'd repurpose them to fit our goals. If the movies and anime were anything to go by, they had access to frankly stupid amounts of manpower, money, and technology, which we could use to further the greater glory of Azula Luna Sato.

We visited Cerulean Cave regularly, to get Zeus used to fighting strong pokemon while we continued to train Sozin, now a Shellgon, in hopes it'd make Salamence as soon as possible. We left our weaker pokemon at the compound with one of the pokemon from our main team supervising their training, and checked in every couple hours through our psychic bond. It was really quite efficient. No need to hamstring the high level training of the main team to bring the low level backups up to speed. After all, why be in two places at the same time when you can be in three or more!

By the time the Conference rolled around, we'd be utterly ready to fucking stomp anyone in the way to our victory. Our main team was absolutely lethal to the toughest types, and extremely dangerous to everything else. We were also tricky as fuck and we doubted many trainers would have the ability to overcome our natural advantages, much less all the strategies we'd designed around them. Coupled with the fact that recalling a pokemon would forfeit it from the match, and we would always have the initiative in some way or another.

The sheer overwhelming power of Ozai and sis alone could likely carry us to the finals without trouble. The monstrous stamina of Nameless the Starmie could let us open with it and exhaust anything our opponents sent out. Yue could run circles around her opponents without moving from the spot she was released. Really, the core four of our team were deadly opponents, and Zeus was shaping up to be a prodigious close combat fighter. I couldn't keep up with him anymore, not since before he turned Blaziken, and certainly not after. He had to handicap himself to keep from beating me too easily. Still, that put me firmly in the same level as the average pokemon in terms of hand to hand combat, which was nothing to sneeze at.

After a few weeks of intense training we were prevented from going to Cerulean Cave on account of a mild case of pneumonia, which had resulted in our mothers panicking and taking us to see our doctor in Viridian. We'd initially thought it to be an overreaction, but to be fair, we had also forgotten that fucked up lungs like mine turned pneumonia into a much more dangerous affair than it was for most people. So after the doctor had me pumped with more medicine, we had grabbed our mothers and taken up Blaine on his offer to visit him. Technically he ran a resort, so we'd be taking it easy, kinda. Okay, so we totally wanted a good fight to make up for losing out on a day of training, likely more than a day given it would take weeks for me to get better.

It was a terrible mistake.

A horrible, terrible mistake.

For you see, Blaine and our mothers had joined forces and ganged up on us and embarrassed us greatly. Our mothers had many years of awkward childhood stories to talk about, and Blaine was old and experienced in matters embarrassing children. Truly, a fearsome combination. In return for the stories, Blaine regaled my mothers with a video recording of our match, with Mama, Gardemom, and the old man excitedly dissecting the match. Apparently, while we had no problems with self-aggrandizement, we did not handle compliments from others well. At least if we judged by the blush that wouldn't go away from our faces throughout most of our visit. They must never meet near my vicinity again.

At least Marina would never hear about this, because we would never tell her.

We fought that day, nothing to the extent of our first battle, and for the next week. Eventually our mothers trusted Blaine enough to let us visit him while they returned to their regular day to day jobs. Which we'd learned that for Mama and Gardemom meant looking into rumors and sightings of dangerous pokemon and hunting them down in the interest of public safety. It worried us quite a bit, since we knew first hand how dangerous that could be and she didn't have our future sight to save her. At least Kanto in general was lacking in wild Poison, Dark and Ghost types, with the latter mostly confined to Lavender.

Today, our fire rooster would be fighting one of his Magmar. We sat on the inn's steps with cups of tea and cookies, our pokemon facing each other in the courtyard. Nameless floated around, ready to douse any fires our monsters started. We were really quite pleased with its new name. Something about it really appealed to us. Zeus started the fight with a blindingly fast spin Blaze Kick, scoring first blood and sending the Magmar flying. She righted herself midair and landed on her feet in time to land a Mega Punch into his chest and drive him into a Barrier Nameless raised in front Blaine's inn. Then the fight started for real.

We felt two familiar presences enter the edge of our senses while watching our pokemon deliver a top tier battle and we couldn't help smiling. Yes, this would be quite nice. Ty Lee rose from my shadow and shot out towards the docks. She'd make for an excellent greeting committee. She appeared in front of one of them, the perfect image of a murder ghost, right up until she started giggling and playing with Gary's hair, who while not too surprised by her sudden appearance, seemed to be very much uncomfortable being that close to her. He must have sensed the change in temperature and correctly assumed that a dangerous Gengar would not be allowed to exist anywhere near a famous vacation resort.

He became a lot more uncomfortable when she didn't let him leave. We could feel him getting ready to reach for one of his pokemon when Ty Lee turned invisible and surprised Ash. Really surprised him, if the high pitched scream from him, Misty, and Brock were anything to go by. Then she grabbed my weird family members and pulled them towards the inn. A lovely family reunion if ever there were to be one, and we'd get to meet Misty for the first time, as well as see what Brock thought of us after we tyrannosaurus reckt him.

Hm.

"You're going to… have visitors soon." Pneumonia sucked something fierce. Everything but our phenomenal cosmic powers was fucking hard. "Two more challengers… for you, old man."

"Oh? Sent your ghost to play guide, did you?" I nodded, and he laughed, that wolfish grin of his that got the bloodthirsty warriors in us going making an appearance. Oh my. We might have just consigned my nephew and step-brother in all but name to a huge fucking dicking. "How good are they, Little Red?"

"We don't... know." And we really didn't. Gary was significantly better than he would have been without my existence, and for all that we left Ash alone, he had changed, and he was likely also a much stronger trainer as well. "We think they'll make… at least quarterfinals in the… conference."

"Hm. I see. Not up to a real battle yet then, but maybe... I think I have an idea. My poor Champions haven't had a chance to get a good workout since you put them through their paces, and you're not in any condition for a match that serious right now, so I think I'll have to make do."

Poor, poor boys. This would be a lot of fun to watch. We started hearing snippets of conversation drifting on the wind, as the soon to be punching bags got near the inn.

"So Azula really has three Gengars?!" Ash shouted loud enough to be heard clearly all the way. The answer was indistinct, barely a murmur to our ears. "More?!"

"Probably." This time we heard Gary clearly, who was the only one who could have answered his question. "Gramps said she rotates her stronger pokemon as trainers for her spares while she focuses on her main team."

"Wow, she's so amazing!"

"Ugh, yes, you have a crush on my aunt, we get it. Please stop gushing about her, she's not that good, she's just lucky." Are we now? Now we wanted to kick his ass for that comment, maybe Blaine…? We glanced at him and were disappointed to feel that there was no way he would let us take the match from him.

"No way, girl. I promised your mothers I would make sure you didn't overexert yourself. Besides, I'm sure you can make a comment about how you had no trouble beating both of my Champions after they lose with their whole teams to them."

Pout.

"So, Gary, what's this Azula like? Ash goes on and on about her all the time, but we figure he's far from impartial." Ah, Leader Brock, you're going to be ever so surprised.

"She's… good. Shut up Ash. She's very quiet, kinda shy when she and her sister aren't busy being pests." What?! We were not shy! We definitely were pests though, we took pleasure in being as obnoxious as possible. "She pretty much trains nonstop. I've yet to see anyone as obsessed as she is. I suppose she has good reason. She's psychic and sees the future, and the last time I saw her she was pretty hurt. I figure she trains so hard because she's seen that she's going to need it. She can't help pissing off people."

Damnit Gary, don't tell people we're not perfect, we have an image to maintain and you blabbing won't help make it easier.

"Azula got hurt?! Why didn't you say anything?!"

"She asked me not to. Speaking of, never tell her I told you."

Too late.

They walked into view of the battle just in time to see Magmar eat a High Jump Kick in exchange for smashing a Psychic into Zeus' face, ending with him taking a dirt nap. Magmar looked woozy on her feet, but she was the clear winner. Fucking magic. Our fire rooster likely learned a lot from this fight. Recall lights lit up both pokemon and then the impromptu party of four had a clear view of Blaine and us. Ty Lee flew into our shadow and then we were smiling serenely at our nephew. Judging by how pale he got, he knew what he'd done. Good.

"Fuck." Aw, he was still using our favorite word.


	51. Conquest 4

Ash's face lit up with happiness when he saw us and he ran up to us and hugged us. I couldn't keep myself from flinching away from him, or trying to, since he already had his arms around me. I could hear him babbling away at me, but I wasn't listening, I needed to get away. I couldn't breathe and he wasn't letting go and he was so strong why was he so strong- Sis took control, doing her best to push down the rising panic, then we weren't there anymore, and we were a few meters to the left, behind Blaine, trying and failing to get my lungs back under control. Sis passed me the new inhaler the doctor had given me for situations such as this one, because apparently the old one wouldn't have been up to the task of keeping me from dying if I had an attack now.

"Azula!" / "'Zula!" / "Is she okay?!" / "What's wrong with her?"

"Keep back kids. Girl, how's your sister?"

"Ra-Ralts." Beloved Tiny Big Sis.

"Alright. Give her space, she just needs some air."

Fucking Inaridamned stupid fucking issues popping up at the worst of fucking times, fucking up things and ruining our fun. Sounds started filtering through the sound of rushing blood in my ears, at first distorted but slowly correcting themselves to normal. The darkness that had been creeping at the edges of my vision receded until I was just laying on the floor, staring at the inn's porch ceiling. Fucking hell. We were definitely going Jirachi hunting so we could Wish away our wounds. Hopefully it wouldn't hate us as much as Suicune had.

I sat up, and found the children all staring at me like they were afraid we would die any second now. Blaine only looked a little concerned but he was already a little used to the occasional fit of breathing difficulties, though admittedly not one as bad as this one. Ugh. Ash made to come up to us again, but this time we all knew what he intended, and we were not willing let him within two meters of us. So we looked at him, all of us. We didn't say anything, didn't growl, or make a noise. We didn't need to. We simply took an interest, aggressively. Few people could have withstood having the attentions of a Gengar in such a situation, much less two and three other eldritch abominations.

He froze where he stood, and Gary looked pretty pale himself, likely remembering the last time we'd stared him down. Brock looked wary, and Misty was downright scared. Could she sense our ghosts?

"Don't… do that again."

"W-What the fuck 'Zula?! What happened to you?" Gary had overcome his really quite reasonable fear when he heard my new voice. Fucking sigh. It was easier to be a bitch to him when he was being a brat instead of, you know, loving family. "Your voice! What- and your throat!"

"We had an… accident, and we got sick." We took a deep breath. "Our lungs don't work that well anymore."

"You have to go home, talk with gramps." Another flinch, which didn't go unnoticed. "Talk with your moms! They'll be so worried. I know competing in the Conference is important for you, but please, it's not that important."

Ouch. Way to shoot armor piercing responses at issues we already felt like utter cunts about. At least we had already done that, and in fact our current state had come about during our time with our family, so we didn't feel too bad. Still, not often that we got opportunities this good to stroke our egos. We breathed in deeply, trying to get as much oxygen as we could into our bloodstream.

"We've been staying at home for a few months now, nephew. We just… like visiting Blaine while we get… better. We're forbidden from… training unsupervised until the… pneumonia gets better." We saw both Ash and Gary's face twist in concern and confusion at our admission.

Wait for it...

"But if you've been at home for that long, it means you won't have enough time to complete your badges and register for the Conference!" Ash seemed heartbroken that we wouldn't participate. It was very difficult to keep a grin off our faces. "I… as long as you're okay, Azula, that's what matters, right?"

"Pika!" Aw, how sweet, kind of. Sure, he'd called us scary monsters, but at least the Vader syndrome seemed to be fully in effect, and he considered us to be on his side.

"There's always next year 'Zula, and that way you'll be better prepared."

"What are you two dorks talking… about?" It was surprisingly hard to not wheeze and cough every time we talked. We should check back with the doctor, it was getting worse.

"Uh, the Conference? You won't be able to participate without getting all your badges, and there's probably not enough time now." Now we let our grin show. Deep breaths.

"Please, we completed our badges and registered for the Conference months ago. It was super easy too. Old man... Blaine here was by far the hardest of them all. Your friends... should know all about it, really. Leader... Harrison, Leader Waterflower, I... hope your pokemon have fully recovered."

We saw the moment Brock made the connection of exactly who we were. We could feel the instant conflict in him over the utter bitch that was Pokemon Trainer Red and the girl Ash apparently gushed about and that Gary had described. Misty didn't catch on until Brock broke the stunned silence, speaking in a slightly chilly tone.

"Trainer Red. Yes, Onix is well. Congratulations on qualifying for the Conference. I was rather impressed despite myself. You broke all sorts of records for a starting trainer. Seventh to register, and fastest ever first time participant. I'm sorry to hear about your health problems."

"Wait, you're Trainer Red?!" Now Misty made the connection, and she was a tad incensed. "You're the reason my sisters are so scared of battling! You hurt our Seel really badly!"

"Yes. Unfortunate, but ultimately... a risk you accept... when you fight. Ours is a blood... sport, and we all accept the risks... we expose ourselves to... when we venture out to fight. What happened to your pokemon... really was unfortunate, but accidents happen, and it was hardly... that serious. We were there, we remember. I've had worse, I have… the scars."

"She's right." Brock's voice was quiet. "I've seen the video. The Elite Four have done much worse. It's rare, and rarer still on the lower tiers of battling, but it still happens, and there are few rules against it."

"Bah. Stop scaring the kids, brats. They have potential, but it won't go anywhere if they're too scared fight." We did feel a little bad about the feelings of inadequacy coursing through Ash and Gary though. "Now, Little Red here tells me you're here to challenge for my badge. You have two options: Fight one of my standard Gym teams, I'll give you my badge if you win, or fight one of my Champions with your whole team and impress me. If you manage the latter, I'll give you a badge when you lose. They haven't had a chance to exercise properly since those two fought them."

"Bullshit! 'Zula would never accept a badge if she lost!"

"That's right, she didn't lose. I faced her as an equal, and she won."

"What?"

They were serious about their aspirations, they knew what that meant, but they also had problems wrapping their head around the fact that someone they knew was nearing Champion levels. It was one thing to be good enough for the Conference, and another one entirely to be good enough to be Champion. The gap was significant, and we were younger than them.

"I'll fight your Champions!" Ah, trusty, reliable Ash. He wanted to be the very best, like no one ever was. Unfortunately for him, that was our role. "Pikachu and I will win too!"

"Well, damn. Now I can't back down. I'll fight your Champions too, old man."

"Hahahaha. That's what I wanted to hear, kids. You'll go far." He turned to us, and spoke. "You well enough to go into the arena and play emergency rescue?"

We snorted. Yeah. Like we were missing out on this.

"Of course."


	52. Conquest 5

Ash got to go first by virtue of being the first one to speak up. This time we got to stand on Blaine's side of the arena. We'd expected some sort of secret base, but it was just a straightforward corridor and a bit of a green room leading out to the platform where he'd stood during our fight. It was different than we'd remembered. Where before had stood a simple stone platform, now there was a high tech booth, with a console to manipulate the sound system to the challenger's booth and the arena. A quick check with our senses showed the protective glass, or whatever the transparent material was, was about thirty centimeters thick, and the platform itself had been heavily reinforced.

Holy shit. Old man had gone all out. Could this be the start of a big return for Gym Leader Blaine? He typed a few things into his console, and then the computerized voice we'd grown so used to when we challenged a gym announced the match.

"Pokemon Trainer Ketchum challenges Gym Leader Blaine for the Volcano Badge. This will be a one on six match with substitutions allowed." Screens lit up on the sides of the volcano's interior, showing their photos, a golden pokeball and five empty circles under Blaine's, and six pokeballs on Ash's side. "Please select your pokemon."

"Go, Charizard!" Blaine threw out his big mean fire dragon. The thing was as magnificent as we remembered, and its roar still shook loose stones around us.

"Go, Muk, Sludge Bomb!" Ash opened with a good choice. Muk was a tough pokemon, and if he managed to poison Charizard he might have a chance at winning. Might. It all depended on how strong his team was. Charizard countered by jumping back and taking to the air, then blasting the Muk with a stream of fire.

"Keep using Sludge Bomb!"

If Muk had been a bit faster on the attack, he might have managed to land a hit. As things stood, Charizard bombarded it with Fire Blasts until it started slowing down, before diving down in a ball of fire, crushing and burning it.

"Muk is unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Return. Go, Wartortle, Hydro Pump!" Ash's turtle pokemon was of a respectable size, but the torrent of water it spit out was very impressive. Charizard dodged, but Wartortle tracked him with its attack and drenched the pseudo dragon. It lasted for all of a second before Charizard countered with a Flamethrower that punched through the water in a cloud of vapor and knocked Wartortle to the edge of the arena. "Blizzard!"

An odd choice, but not a bad one. The mass of freezing air buffeted Charizard and caused it to crash back down into the arena, where the turtle pressed the advantage and launched another Hydro Pump. Then Charizard got really angry, rushing through the water until grabbed Wartortle by its shell and repeatedly slammed it into the ground, then threw it against the wall of the volcano. An effort of will grabbed it out of the air before it fell too long and deposited the unconscious turtle on the arena.

"Wartortle is unable battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Go, Charizard, Take Down!" Ash's Charizard was still very young, and barely reached up to neck height on Blaine's, but we had vague memories of it eventually turning into an unstoppable engine of fuck your teams, capable of beating legendaries. For now, it'd have to satisfy itself with surviving Blaine's. Credit where it's due, however, it didn't even hesitate in charging a much bigger opponent. That's where the credit ended, because Blaine's Charizard grabbed it by the neck and its right side, then rotated and threw it at the wall. It hit with a meaty thud and fell for a couple seconds before spreading its wings and flying back up to the platform.

At which point it had to start dodging frantically to avoid a barrage of Fire Blasts. It managed, before dive bombing Blaine's Charizard and picking it up for a Seismic Toss. Surprisingly, it actually succeeded in lifting it up in the opening moves of the attack, right up until the bigger Charizard flexed its wings, grabbed Ash's Charizard, and reversed the hold. Blaine's fire dragon slammed Ash's into the platform with a thunderous crash. A roar shook the arena again, a clear display of dominance over the smaller dragon. Rivulets of blood trickled down the side of Blaine's Charizard's neck. A last ditch Crunch or Bite. Thing had spirit.

"Charizard in unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Go, Ivysaur, Leech Seed and be ready to dodge!"

The seeds dug into Charizard's skin and exploded into a frenzy of vines. Charizard simply flexed and snapped the majority and spat a Fire Blast at the plant pokemon, which it managed to mostly dodge, ending with scorches along its right side.

"Razor Leaves, target its wings!"

Well. That was positively ruthless! Ashy boy was learning! Charizard responded by tucking them close to its body and dodging like crazy and staying firmly on the ground.

"Use your Vine Whips to move around faster, Ivysaur!" Charizard didn't respond well to that, launching Flamethrowers all over, trying to hit the plant dinosaur.

Blaine spoke for the first time during the battle, keying his microphone.

"Overheat." And his Charizard exploded in an inferno of fire that filled the chamber and threw Ivysaur off the platform, cooking the ground under it until it was a molten dark red. The Ivysaur caught itself on the chains that suspended the platform near Ash's side. It hauled itself back up, spat a cloud of powder at Charizard from its bulb, and collapsed. Charizard sneezed.

"Ivysaur is unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Go, Pidgeot, Air Slash, keep moving!" The fuckhuge bird was blidningly fast, and was opening bleeding cuts all over Charizard's skin. "Hurricane!"

"Overheat."

"Fly out, then Sky Attack!" Pidgeot outflew the wall of fire that rushed out of the volcano's mouth and then came crashing back down like a fucking meteor into the Charizard. When the glare faded, it revealed Charizard with a broken and torn wing, as well as a deep wound in its side. The Pidgeot lay at its feet, out cold.

"Pidgeot is unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Go, Pikachu, win this! Thunder!"

The best contender for strongest Pikachu in the history of the species let loose an enormous bolt of lightning that crashed into Charizard like a fucking locomotive, and didn't stop. Charizard spat a Fire Blast through the lightning. It detonated right on Pikachu, ragdolling it through the air much like sis had, except with a lot more in the way of serious burns and not just the trauma from the shockwave. The electric mouse bounced off the glass protecting Ash's booth and landed back on the platform, surprisingly still conscious, if only long enough to launch another Thunder at Charizard before collapsing.

"Pikachu is unable to battle. Winner: Gym Leader Blaine."

Ash had come amazingly close to beating Blaine's challenge, especially with how woozy Charizard looked. A sentiment that was reinforced when the fire dragon tilted over and caught itself on its less injured side before being lit up by recall light. We floated Pikachu over to Ash, where he sprang into action along with Brock, applying Potions and Burn Heal. Our opinion of them rose even higher. They were very prepared. This Ash was going places, no way he was going to be the eternal loser we remembered from our memories. Well, unless Gary had improved even more than he had.

We took a step and we were in their booth, the smell of burned hair and flesh strong in the air. Bad burns, but nothing a couple hours in a Pokemon Center wouldn't cure.

"Well fought, Ash. We're… impressed. You did much… better than we expected. You're… further along than we remembered you'd… be at this point." Stealth mode disengaged, and fucking everyone jumped at the sound of our voice. We actually got a yelp from Misty.

"How did you get here so fast?!" We had found a noble pursuit to accompany Oak Baiting: Misty Trolling. A smug grin appeared on my face. There was really only only one answer we could give to such a question. Deep breaths.

"Fuck you, that's how." Her indignant squawk was a thing of beauty.

"But we lost, Azula, and Pikachu got hurt because we weren't good enough."

"Few in the continent could have… challenged that Charizard… with a full team. That you almost… won is a credit to your and… your pokemon's talents."

"You beat him!"

"We've been training… nearly since we were… born. Sis is older… than me."

"Wait, the jacket Ralts is ten years old? Shouldn't she have evolved at least once already?" Brock was, understandably, a tad puzzled and a little annoyed. Not often you get reminded about the dangers of assuming things twice by the same people over the same thing, months apart.

"Ralts."

"You want a better challenge." Now he was incredulous.

"She did beat my other Champion." Blaine walked into the booth, a Volcano Badge held in his right hand. "This is yours, Trainer Ketchum. You and your team earned it."

"I… Thank you, Leader Blaine. We'll beat you one day."

"Hahahaha. That's the spirit boy. Go get your team to the Pokemon Center. I have another match to fight." He left for his side of the platform with a spring in his step and a wolfish smile on his face, Ash and his party following him out. Getting back into battling was good for him.

"Ready for a taste… of the big leagues, nephew?" He gave us a look. It wasn't a very good look. He just didn't have enough intimidation factor yet. Maybe after puberty. Likely not until his twenties. "We think you got the tougher opponent. His… Magmortar is nasty. Almost… killed our Starmie."

"Gee, thanks 'Zula, that makes me feel so much better."

"You're welcome!" We answered as brightly as we could. He glowered at us. We smiled. He ignored us and slotted his pokedex into the console. Heh.

"Pokemon Trainer Blue challenges Gym Leader Blaine for the Volcano Badge. This will be a one on six match with substitutions allowed." The screens on the sides lit up again, Gary's photo appearing where Ash's had been. The golden pokeball of Blaine's last Champion lit up under his picture, and a full team under Gary's. "Please select your pokemon."

"Don't you worry little aunt," He gave us a confident grin, the legendary Oak charm positively radiating from him.

The future surged and we _Saw_ him a little older, walking out into an arena, confident, ready to win. The crowds watching went wild. He stopped on his side of the field, a pokeball in hand. A voice announced "Pokemon Trainer Blue challenges Champion-"

"I got this."


	53. Conquest 6

"Go, Magmortar!"

"Go, Arcanine, Extremespeed!"

Gary's hound was a magnificent beast with thick shiny fur covering big muscles. It was fast, and barrelled into Magmortar like a wrecking ball, driving it back a couple steps before the Blast pokemon braced itself and stopped Arcanine. What followed next was a beatdown started by picking up the terribly mislabeled Legendary pokemon and slamming it back down against the arena floor a couple times before it managed to break free. Then taking a Mega Punch to the snout that landed it at the edge of the platform.

"Arcanine, Outrage."

A red glow surrounded Arcanine and it went wild, launching a Hyper Beam at Magmortar, following through with a Giga Impact that bowled it over and a Crunch that was barely blocked by a flame striped arm. We raised an eyebrow. That was something else. Two large attacks in a row without having to rest? Unfortunately, Magmortar used the opportunity to flip them and straddle Arcanine, before raining down punches upon it. Arcanine was still in the throes of its Outrage, and managed to dislodge Magmortar long enough to open up some distance for a second Giga Impact. Right into Magmortar's fist.

"Arcanine is unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Go, Umbreon. Chain Feint Attacks and Dark Pulses, whittle it down."

Gary was going for a similar strategy as we had, except he didn't have a type advantage like Namelass had had. It was fascinating to watch his pokemon slip out the smallest of shadows and harrassing Magmortar. The Moonlight pokemon was slippery and attacks were missing it by quite a bit. Near misses singed it or threw it off a little, but most often it was gone before Blaine's monster could capitalize and end the fight. It was quite amazing, but fucking hells, this was going to be a very long fight. Guess we had time to mess around with our phone. Hm. Idea. We woke Porygon up and set it to optimize the video compression algorithms. A slight effort of will Teleported the phone outside the booth, and sis erected a barrier to protect our AI and prototype.

Twelve minutes later, Umbreon was exhausted enough that it took a little too long to vanish into the shadows and ate a Fire Blast to the face. Then it was Magmortar's turn to smack the Moonlight pokemon around until it fell from the platform and we had to bring it back up to be recalled. Porygon had managed to improve video compression by about ten percent without a corresponding loss in quality during the fight too!

"Umbreon is unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Go Pidgeot, harass it from afar with Hurricanes and Air Slashes!"

Gary's Pidgeot was a little smaller than Ash's, but it was faster, and the volume of attacks it was sending at Magmortar was impressive. Unlike with Umbreon, the huge bird was an available target at all times however, and the Blast pokemon could fire three attacks at the same time. Two minutes later, it had caught fire from dodging a Flamethrower into the path of a Fire Blast. Gary recalled it with a curse and withdrew it from the match.

"Pidgeot is unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Go Ariados, Sludge Bomb!"

I froze before the spider even finished materializing, and when it did the world fell away. All I could see was a fucking spider the size of a fucking really big dog. My skin crawled looking at its jerky alien movements, and I felt the sounds it made to my very bones. I couldn't breathe. My lungs hurt and I couldn't seem to remember how to get them working again. I saw Gary's face, he looked worried and he was blocking the spider, but the spider was still there and now I couldn't see if it was coming at me and I-

"Alakazam is unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

Oh. Fucking spiders and fucking lungs. Maybe we should get an oxygen tank for situations like that one. I'd blanked out through two fights. We needed to do something about that. It was too big a weakness.

"Go Blastoise, Hydro Pump!

Gary's Blastoise was strong, and we had a feeling that given time it was going to turn into an equal to Blaine's Charizard at its prime. It barraged Magmortar with Hydro Pump after Hydro Pump, tanking the counter Fire Blasts and Flamethrowers with little trouble, before Tackling it and smashing against the wall of the Volcano. Blastoise then sprang from the wall back onto the platform. Magmortar fell down to the lava pool from where it let out an annoyed roar. After all, for all that the lava was really quite nice for it, it couldn't jump back onto the platform.

"Magmortar is unable to battle. Winner: Pokemon Trainer Blue."

"Fuck yes!" Gary punched the air and made to hugs us, only to run into a wall of force. "Aw, come on 'Zula!"

"Congrats, Gary. We're impressed. Come on, let's... meet the old man by the entrance."

Blaine gave Gary his badge, and sent us on our way to meet with Ash. We were leaning on Gary during the walk back. After all, why make a bigger effort than necessary on walking when we could just use our trusty nephew. We were halfway to the Pokemon Center when Gary spoke up.

"You okay, 'Zula? You worried us for a little bit there."

We cared for Gary, and we trusted him to a degree, but telling him something like that… No. We couldn't do that.

"We're fine. Just... a small issue."

"It was more than small-"

"Leave it." Bad enough my lungs were so fucked up there was no way to keep the issue secret.

"Okay. Thanks for getting me to fight Blaine. It was amazing. I can't imagine what the rest of his Champion team was like. Fuck, I wonder what your team's like! You beat one of his champions three on three."

"Both, three on three."

"You've got to show me your team now." We smirked. We had an _idea_. Deep breaths.

"Wait for the Conference like everyone else. Although, we would be… willing to fight you… and Ash someday. One pokemon each… against one of ours."

We almost felt bad for them. Almost.

"You're on."

We switched to sending thoughts at him. Talking was too hard. We had an idea. There was no reason not to Teleport everyone home, and we knew Father and Daisy missed Gary. Same for Dehlia and Ash. Yes, we'd do that. We were nearing the Pokemon Center when we heard something that had us all perking up.

"-urrender now or prepare to fight!"

"Meowth! That's right!"

Well. Entertainment. We remembered those three.

"Holy fuck 'Zula! What the hell?!"

Our power had slipped its leash for the first time in ages, and hoarfrost started forming around us. The temperature dropping drastically in an instant. We didn't quite feel it, cold as we always were, but our power could tell. That was new. Maybe we should curb the soul eating thing a little bit.

Hahaha.

"You never learn, do you?" Ashy boy was annoyed. "Look, I just got done fighting a really tough battle, so I'm not in the mood for your usual brand of annoyance. Leave us alone or I'll let Charizard have you."

"Too late~" Our power, totally unintentionally and not at all something we practiced, warped our already slightly creepy voice into something akin to Ozai's laughter, and fucking everyone within hearing froze. "Hello, Rockets."

We dove into their minds, but we already knew what we'd find. These three were not acceptable targets. Ty Lee and Mai rose from our shadow, looming behind us and eyeing the trio hungrily. They turned completely white upon seeing our ghosts. Delicious fear.

"Run, little insects, before we eat your souls."

The resulting ear piercing screams were extremely impressive, and they probably set some sort of speed record running the fuck away. We made sure to insert the knowledge that we'd be heading to Pallet Town in their minds though. Wouldn't want them to lose track of Ash. Right then, that's handled, time to get Zeus healed up. We turned our attention back to the people around us and found them freaked the fuck out.

"What? We don't like Rockets."

"I… Nevermind 'Zula," Gary shook his head. Let's just get to the Pokemon Center."

Hm. We should text Marina. She was on her way to challenge for her fourth badge, and since we'd already been to Ecruteak City we could meet up with her afterwards. We could even invite her to the Conference!

"Yeah, that silly smile on her face means she's off in her own world now. Daisy says there this girl in- ow! What the fuck 'Zula."

The psychic dope slap. A necessary tool for the noble art of Oak Baiting.

And no, we weren't blushing, no matter what anyone said about it!


	54. Conquest 7

AN:

Azuluna's Team:

Yue the A-Ninetales  
Ozai the Gengar  
Nameless the Starmie  
Zeus the Blaziken  
Sozin the Shellgon

Helpers:  
Mai the Gengar  
Ty Lee the Gengar

Conquest 3.7

Having the whole family back at the compound was comforting on a level we couldn't describe. We were a family in every meaning of the word, if perhaps a very weird example of one. Daisy had been fully forgiven by our mothers, and Dehlia and I were doing our best to cheer up father. We weren't doing too well on that front, but at least I was slowly getting over my stupid fear of him and sis was starting to hate him less, so progress.

We'd pondered how to fix the arachnophobia issue, and hadn't come up with a single way to actually fix the problem without the kind of psychic surgery that could cause problems. Who knew refusing to even consider to be within line of sight of the horrible monsters was counterproductive to getting over the fear? Ah well. At least we'd found a shortcut and set up a block to prevent my brain from messing with the rest of my body during a fear response. It majorly fucked up fight or flight, but hopefully future sight and combat precognition would be enough to compensate. At least this way I wouldn't completely black out from oxygen deprivation when I saw a spider pokemon.

We could feel the future pressing down on us on the day Marina was to challenge Morty. We Teleported near the Burned Tower, since it was one of the places least likely to get us spotted by someone, even if it was also one of the places most likely to get us another assassination attempt by a legendary pokemon. We would meet her at the Pokemon Center after she won her badge, on account of Morty hating our guts. We weren't waiting long before she walked into the lobby, and she looked even more amazing than we remembered. She'd had a bit of a growth spurt, and she was a little taller and a lot prettier. Next thing we knew we had tackle hugged her and we were all squealing and jumping around.

A small part of us pointed out that we were acting exactly like one of those super annoying girly girls we couldn't stand who screamed and giggled about everything for no reason at all. Well, not like we weren't huge hypocrites anyway. At least we had good reason to be so animated, especially when she showed us her Fog Badge. Then she saw my newest scar and we had to spend ten minutes calming her down. We'd told her that there'd been a small accident that had damaged my voice and lungs, but apparently she knew enough to know that a scar like that could have only come from something major. So in the interest of full disclosure we told her about the pneumonia, and we had to reassure her again that we were as well as we could be.

Eventually she healed her pokemon and we settled down to chat. She released a Misdreavous to fly around, and while it was initially skittish, it warmed up to us fairly quickly. The conversation eventually moved to one of her friends from New Bark, and somehow we ended up sitting in front of one of the video phones waiting for her friend Vincent to pick up the phone. What followed was… interesting. It was clear from the word go that the boy was a little creeped out by us, something that Marina did not seem to be picking up on. That was fine, we got to hug Marina. We also probably made it worse when we glared murderously at him after he tried to flirt with her and he turned into a pale stuttering mess. In our defense, she was way out of his league and she could do better. Like us! After all, we were Champions to be.

"Uh, um, Oh! Look what the Gengar dragged in!" Vincent said, looking to the side of the screen like whatever he was looking at would save him from us. We were a bit puzzled though, all three of our Gengars were in our shadow and had been all day. They couldn't have dragged anything in.

"What? Oh, Jimmy, hi!" That's what he'd meant. She'd stood up and dragged us with her to another boy. If memory served, this one was also one of her friends from New Bark. He was tanned, taller than us, and had the weirdest hairdo under his cap that we'd ever seen. He had a Typhlosion by his side and from looking at it, seemed to be well taken care of. "Oh wow, your Cyndaquil is already a Typhlosion! You two must be fighting so much!"

"Yeah, we challenge every trainer we meet!" He said, blushing, leaning back a bit and slipping his hands into his hoodie's pockets.

"Hello Typhlosion, you're so cute!" And holy fuck, that thing actually was cute as fuck when it was being all friendly and shit. She turned her attention back to Jimmy and pulles us forward a little, "This is Azula, I met her when Professor Elm gave me my Totodile, Wani-Wani! She was the first person I fought, and it ended in a draw! Can you imagine that for my first battle? We've been talking every day since then."

Bluuuush. Damnit, pale skin, why must you betray us so!

"We were talking with Vincent, they just met too. Anyhow, I'll call you later, okay Vince?"

"Wait, don't hang up!" We directed our attentions back at him. "Uh, nevermind! Talk to you later, bye!" And the line went dead. Good. Now it was just a matter of coming to an understanding with Jimmy. It was obvious he liked Marina, we could feel it, and she liked him back a little, though thankfully she liked us more. She would totally choose us, especially seeing as how we somehow ended in a field a little ways out from the Ecruteak City limits about to have a two vs. two fight against Jimmy. Note to selves: Marina could probably talk us into anything. Something about wanting to see us fight again, and wanting to see Jimmy in action too.

Now, what the fuck were we going to do? By this point the only member of our team that wasn't terribly overpowered was Sozin, and having a Shellgon fight was boring as fuck. There was a reason we were training him so hard. Well, okay, it was mostly to get ourselves an awesome dragon, but the point stood. If we were fighting, may as well go all out, yeah? Impress Marina and show dominance over Jimmy. Sis hopped out of our jacket and walked out in front of me, ready to smack a bitch.

Hehehe.

Hehehehe.

"Alright, go Beedril! Pin Missile!"

Sis raised a simple barrier to block the super effective barrage, and sent a weak Psychic downrange at the flying forest cancer. Wouldn't do to kill it by hitting it with too much force. It smashed against ground, rolled a few meters, and didn't stand back up. The looks of shock on their faces were delicious. Marina knew sis was strong, but it was something else entirely to be told and to see it for yourself, especially since she was still in her first stage.

"What was that?!" Marina and Jimmy exclaimed nearly simultaneously, then Marina continued. "How did you do that?"

"Funny thing, we've… never actually talked… much about our achievements, but it's… as good a time… as any: Would you like to… come watch us compete… in the Indigo Conference? We… registered a few months ago."

"How do you already have eight badges?"

"We're just that… awesome."

"Oh wow, now I really want to beat you, Little Red!" Jimmy was really excited now. He was a fighter. Yes, he was definitely much better than Vincent. Not as good as us, of course, but he would do in a pinch if something happened to us. "Go, Typhlosion, Flare Blitz!"

Fuck it, we actually liked him a little. We'd give him a good fight. Maybe this fight right here was the reason the future was being such a fucking cunt today and nothing more would happen.

Hahaha...

Sis raised a Protect and Typhlosion smacked right into it with a decent amount of force, before springing off it and sending a Flamethrower as sis over the edge of the barrier. She Teleported to the left, and sent a weak Psychic back at it, launching it into a tree. Typhlosion twisted in mid air and landed on the tree for all of an instant, before launching itself at sis in another Flare Blitz. Fuck, but this brought back memories of our snowy home and better times when I wasn't so fucking fucked up and everything was so much simpler. Times when I didn't wake up wanting to rob a pharmacy, when I didn't have to worry about a father I was terrified of, when our mothers didn't look at me with such pain and fear in their eyes, like I might break at any moment if they did or said the wrong thing, like-

I felt sis inside my head, blunting the edges of my emotions, pulling me up from another downward spiral. Fuck. That's it. We're going home, taking Marina with us, and we're having a goddamned girls' night in. We focused back on the battle, the last few moments rushing across our bond and I saw sis stop Typhlosion midair and then launching it against another tree, this time faster and with too much force for the fire ferret to react in time. It was still ready to go and keep fighting, but we were done. He would one day be a worthy opponent, maybe even a peer, but he wasn't there yet. Sis walked back to me, using our power to keep from slipping on the ice that had formed on the ground around me, and hopped into her spot in my jacket.

"I… Sorry. I don't feel well." And the feeling of the future pressing down was starting to become extremely uncomfortable. "Is it okay if we... finish the fight some other... time?"

"Yeah, sure. You going to be okay?"

"Yes. We'll be fine." We looked up and we saw storm clouds in the distance, moving far too quickly to be natural. We felt the future pushing us towards the storm and we couldn't help but feel like this was a terrible idea. Sigh. "Come, follow."

"What? Where?" We pointed towards the clouds, and Marina gaze followed. "Oh. What's that?"

"Destiny calling to us. We're… meant to be there."


	55. Conquest 8

Conquest 3.8

We could feel there was no need to hurry, and we walked until we started hearing the shockwaves of very powerful electric attacks, followed by deep roars. We cleared the tree line and walked out into a clearing. That was around the time I regretted paying attention to the future, heartless bitch that it was. A fucking Raikou was there, as were two Team Rocket fuckers, and two of their machines of the week, a weird two legged robot with tentacles ending in pincers, and a crystal held by some sort of device

Fucking damnit.

Raikou sent a Thunderbolt at the robot, but the attack somehow arced away from its target and struck the crystal. It absorbed the energy and spat it back at the legendary beast, forcing a pained roar from it. Marina and Jimmy sprang into action, releasing their pokemon against the Rockets. We went for a more direct route.

We allowed our power to spill out from the iron grip we usually held it in, and hoarfrost formed around us, fog condensing into being around our feet. We pulled at our power like we hadn't in a long time, and odd shadows started flickering around us in places there shouldn't be any shadows. We sent a lance of kinetic energy rocketing centers mass of the robot and it struck with an explosion of force, a shockwave hitting us a second later with enough strength to make our companions stumble. There was nothing left of the machine beyond scrap, and against all expectations the pilot had survived with minor injuries.

Good. We wanted some fast food.

"Attila! Are you alright?" Huh. They're the epitome of androgynous. Couldn't tell whether they were male or female.

"I've had worse, Hun. Go, Skarmory, slice those brats into ribbons."

"Steelix, crush them!"

Their pokemon materialized and wasted no time in trying to murder us, the tell tale glow of Steel Wing covering the Skarmory's wings. The Steelix launched itself at us, intent on crushing or eating us in a single bite. We raised a Protect and the steel snake smashed into it. It was fucking hilarious to watch to be honest, that thing was so much bigger than us and yet we'd stopped it cold. We let Zeus out, Ty Lee and Mai rising form our shadow. They'd be enough to deal with the trash. We grabbed Marina and Jimmy, took a step, then the pokemon were behind us and Raikou and the Rockets ahead of us.

We reached for our power again, ice and shadows forming around us, and struck at the crystal device with all our might. For a second it seemed like the crystal suffered no damage and absorbed all the energy from our attack, then a crack formed along its length. Well then. It seemed this was simply a matter of applying enough firepower. Five more Psychics later and it exploded in a rain of shrapnel and Raikou's next Thunderbolt didn't get redirected away from the Rockets.

We had to admit, we felt a little inadequate. Sure, we probably had a much larger body count, but we'd never killed someone in such a showy manner before. Seriously, they fucking exploded in a cloud of red mist. Fuck. Sis hopped out of her spot an instant before Raikou turned back to look at us in what seemed like a very threatening manner. Right, guess it didn't like us any better than Suicune. Okay, from what we felt, it only really disliked us a lot, instead of outright hating us like the water dog, but still, we probably wouldn't get out of fighting it. We could fucking feel the growl it was putting out. We were not in a state to put up against another legendary, even though it hadn't managed to get a cheap shot in like the water dog had.

"Why is it looking at us like that?" Jimmy spoke up with more than a little fucking absolute terror in his voice. Fair. He had just seen two people murdered in front of him.

"Stand back. It's… not after you." Our senses unfolded to their fullest, a torrent of information flowing into our minds, distributing the processing load of all the future possibilities we saw throughout our brains and those of our Gengars.

"We can't leave you to deal with it alone!" Marina was… unwell and seemed to be running purely on adrenaline and a stubborn refusal to abandon us. We definitely needed to take her home now. Our mothers could help her deal with what she'd just seen.

"It won't be the first time… we've dealt with one of the… legendary beast. Please keep back, we don't... know that we can keep you safe… if you don't."

Raikou attacked first, throwing a Thunder at us that made the Protect we raised feel like it was about to shatter until it let up. An effort of will had our team released from their balls and rushing in to engage the thunder dog. Then Ozai appeared right beside it, bit into its shoulder, and dug its claws into its leg. Perfect, crippled leg. Mean Looks finished the job of keeping it from escaping.

It was a deadly game. Deadlier than fighting Suicune had been.

One hit to us would kill us, one hit to our more vulnerable pokemon could kill them, and we had to make sure Jimmy and Marina were safe. All complicated by the fact that lightning was instantaneous and we had to predict attacks to block or dodge them. Especially now that Raikou knew our ghosts were there and it wouldn't be caught out by a surprise attack. We started building up a Psychic like the one that had broken Suicune, but Raikou seemed to be better at sensing energy, because it shifted its focus fully to us until we had to break off. It'd have to be a battle of attrition, and that wasn't a fight we were sure we could win as we were.

We needed to change the fight or we would lose someone. We're sorry Marina, for dragging you into the uglier side of the world, for having to do what we have to now. We felt her mind respond to us and we almost cried when all she cared about was that we came out of this safely. So be it. The pokemon we'd left fighting the trash joined in on the legendary fight. They must have dealt with the steel types already.

Psychic blades rained down on Raikou opening bloody wounds, our Gengars clawed at its eyes, Zeus, Yue, and Nameless hammered its crippled leg and shoulder. Despite all that, it pushed us back bit by bit, a migraine getting worse with every instant of the future we had to look over. Predictions causing actions causing more predictions causing more actions in a nearly endless feedback loop trying to keep us all alive and uninjured. What was a little bit more nervous system damage in the name of not dying?

We tried separating, Nameless, sis, and I each charging an attack of our own. It proved to be a mistake and I had to Teleport back to sis for defense. Right. It wanted sis and I specifically. We had a split second of warning before it turned back to Nameless. There was no time to block, no time to dodge. Our starfish let loose the Psychic it'd been charging just as Raikou committed to its own attack. The Thunderbolt was devastating, roasting Nameless' fleshy extremities and completely taking it out of the fight, cracks running through it's jewel. The thunder dog was sent flying by the Psychic, but it wouldn't be enough, it hadn't been a decisive hit, and we were down a pokemon.

We pulled Jimmy and Marina to us and recalled our team. We didn't need to win, we'd never needed to win. It'd been our pride that demanded we win. Now Nameless could be dead, and the rest of us were in more danger than before. We'd just needed a chance to retreat, and our starfish had bought it for us. We Teleported home, bringing everyone with us, our mothers would make sure everything was okay. They'd make everything okay.

"Azula?!"

We heard Mama's voice in the distance and relaxed. Everything was okay now. I could rest now.


	56. Conquest 9

Conquest 3.9

We were grounded. Kind of. By which we meant that our mothers had asked us very nicely not to leave their sight until we were less unhealthy or they'd be very hurt and disappointed in us. To be fair, they had good reason. This made two times we Teleported in while in trouble, except this time I'd been bleeding out my eyes and nose while in deadly respiratory distress. At least our mothers loved Marina, and Marina had taken well to their help in dealing with seeing two people explode. Jimmy was doing especially well, and he and Ash got along like they'd been friends for years. Fucking causality was fucking weird, seriously.

We'd gone out to have fun with our friend, had almost died again, and now Ash had a friendly rival that if what we were getting from our past life was right, he would have never met. Fucking destiny. It didn't help that everyone kept being crazy and teasing us and Marina about about our totally only friendship. Gary even had the balls to join in! Well, okay, he briefly had the balls to join in. Then we glared at him and they retreated so hard into him you could have mistaken them for his tonsils. That'd teach him to make comments that caused our mothers to take pictures of us while we were blushing.

They stayed for a week, and Mama extracted a promise from Marina and Jimmy to call once a week to make sure they were handling things okay. We Teleported them back to Ecruteak and Marina set off to get her next badge. She'd agree to watch us win the Indigo Conference as long as we agreed to watch her win the Silver Conference a few months later. Maybe we could speedrun the rest of the Johto Gyms and collect Giovanni's and Sabrina's, and surprise her by participating. Wait, would we even be allowed to participate? We'd be the Champion for both regions. Hm. Maybe we should actually look up what being Champion entailed…

Yeah, probably a good idea. We'd make a note of it.

Training took up all of our time. The Raikou had jogged my memories and a few incoming events had reminded us of the need to be ready. Mewtwo was coming, and he was much stronger than the legendary dogs. We needed our team to be ready to beat him. Fortunately our ghosts gave us a bit of an advantage, and we might have better results fighting him than Raikou. Psychic was much slower than fucking lightning attacks, and we'd managed to survive those well enough. Hopefully Nameless would recover fully, because we didn't have a suitable water type to replace it with. The Pallet Nurse Joy was optimistic, but the damage to the gem was extensive and repairing it was taking some time.

Maybe we should get an army of Alakazams to remodel Suicune's head? Yes, we'd have to get started on that for later, but that project wouldn't be ready in time for the Conference. Fuck. Fucking Raikou.

Ozai's creepy as fuck laughter drew our attention back to our pokemon, and we saw something we'd been waiting some time for. Fucking A, Sozin was finally evolving. The lightshow around our new murder dragon faded and the squat reptile let out a roar. Sniff. They grew up so fast. Testing time then. We felt Mama coming up to us, and she felt like she wanted to talk with us. Right, our ghosts would have to sub in. It was so fucking useful to be in so many places at the same time.

"Hey Pumpkins, can we talk?"

"Yeah?" Those were words we never wanted to hear. They usually preceded conversations about things we didn't want to talk about.

"I… okay, I'm just going to ask, because I don't know how to breach the subject. Did you do something to make the legendary beasts hate you enough to try to kill you on sight?"

Like this particular subject.

"Because it's enough of an open secret in the Champion circuit that while they're very defensive, they're not outright hostile, and that they're more likely to run away than fight… and well, two of them have already tried to kill you. I… we're worried."

We'd agonized over this, and we were beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, it had something to do, at least in part, with our love for souls. We'd checked, and there was something about us that really fucking freaked out a lot of pokemon on sight, sometimes they didn't even have to see us and they still freaked out over us. Then there were other times when the pokemon did not care one fucking bit we were there. It seemed to vary among individuals and from species to species, though enough exposure seemed to inure them to our presence. Problem was, the smartest pokemon, the ones who could communicate well enough to tell us, couldn't seem to feel it enough to tell us what it was. It was probably an instinct of some kind.

Observing ghost pokemon was very illuminating, with the weaker specimens being utterly terrified of us, but the stronger ones being almost attracted. At least the fact Ozai, and to a significantly lesser degree Mai and Ty Lee, simply scared everything helped us see it couldn't be just soul eating. Ugh. Why must everything be so fucking annoying.

"We don't know." Best part was that we really didn't, and Mama could tell we believed that.

"But you suspect." Damn those supernatural mother senses.

"Partly."

How to explain to your mother that you've become a soul eating eldritch abomination? We took a deep breath, the fading remnants of the pneumonia making my chest ache a little and we let go of our power. We could feel our heart rate going up at the prospect of our mothers rejecting us, all the while ice began to form around us and shadows flickered at the corner of our vision. She jumped at the sudden cold and the seemingly living shadows, growing concerned when she realized it was coming from us. _Please don't hate us_.

"When… When the Haunters hurt me, they… they hurt more than just my body. When we remember the pain… it's like it's happening all over again. We've seen our souls, we've seen quite a few souls, and mine still has bite marks on it. The wound's healed, but what they ate… it's never coming back, and it hurt so much when the bites were still healing. You know what came from that."

She was hugging us to her now, freezing cold and all, and we savored it as if it were the last time we'd ever get to do so. We were crying, we realized. Why?

"After we beat the Fuchsia Gym… one of the retainers there followed us back to our room at the Pokemon Center. We didn't go back right away, we celebrated a little, my powers were healthy, and my soul barely hurt anymore. We… fuck. We got dinner and, uh, illegally bought a bottle of wine. Kinda."

We could feel she clearly didn't approve of that, but she seemed to understand that we had more and worse to say, so she just hugged us tighter against her.

"We don't remember much of what happened, just flashes and impressions. She tried to drug us and we fought back. She'd have succeeded if not for our precognition. She was a Rocket spy, placed in the gym to scout out potential targets. She- We ate her. Her soul. We took everything of value until she was an empty husk. We think it's partly because of that, but we're sure it's not only because of it that they've tried to kill me."

"How many?"

And that was the make or break question, wasn't it? We took a deep breath and braces ourselves for whatever may come.

"Eleven personally, the Gengars have more."

"Why?" We hadn't expected that question, but it mattered to her, we could hear it in her voice, in her demeanor, could feel her mind needed an answer.

"They were scum, monsters of some kind or another, and they were Rockets."

She was disturbed, scared, and it hurt her so much to hear about what we'd done, but we could feel she still loved us, wasn't going to reject us. We cried on her until we fell asleep. She didn't hate us and she knew a little bit more about the monsters we'd become. Maybe things would be okay.

"Oh babies…"

I woke up in Mama's arms and sis in mine. We were warm, we were safe, and then the memories rushed in. We'd told Mama. She hugged us to her. She'd felt us wake up.

"If you could change what you did, would you?"

"No. They were monsters, one and all, killers, rapists, and kidnappers. Do we have the right to be their executioner? Probably not, but we can be, and if by stopping them we save one life, ours or someone else's, then so be it. If we profit immensely from doing so, then all the better."

"Is there evidence?" I felt her mind running through the situation, thinking about every possibility.

"No. I… We learned a lot from the ninja from Fuchsia." A knot of tension inside of her loosened, and I felt tears fall on the top of my head. "Please don't cry, it's not your fault."

"I wish you didn't have to go through what you have." She kissed the top of my head, "I'm not naive about the world we live in, I know that sometimes you have no other choice but to do something terrible to stop something worse. Champions have responsibilities to their region, and sometimes there's only one thing you can do… For all that Sinnoh is beautiful, it had its own problems, and it fell to me to solve them when no one else could. It's something you agree to when you become Champion if you want to stay Champion. It was hard at first, but… I had to make sure you two had a world to live in, and if I had to do despicable things to keep you safe and happy then there was really only one thing I could have done."

I was stunned. Mama had all but admitted she was a killer, that in addition to dealing with dangerous pokemon she was pretty much an assassin for the safety of the people living in Sinnoh, and most likely Kanto now too. The Champions were more than a symbol. They were protectors, troubleshooters in the most insincere sense of the word. That was… We'd have to think on whether we were willing to do the job. If the benefits of a target rich environment outweighed the responsibilities.

"We would all do anything for you, babies, anything. But… I need you to promise me, please promise me, that you won't let yourself become a monster. That you won't let yourself grow to like the things you're forced to do…" Fear coursed through her and her arms tightened around us. "I don't want to see you become a target for the others."

"We're already monsters, Mama, but I promise, we won't force you to have to choose. We'll behave."


	57. Conquest 10

Conquest 3.10

There was a change in dynamics after our confession. Mama took couple hours out of her day to tell us about her time as Champion, of the things she'd done, of the mistakes she'd made and the lives she'd saved and the ones she'd destroyed. She believed we'd make Champion, there was no doubt in her mind after she'd seen our team training, but she wanted us to know what we'd be walking into. We were curious how the Elite Four and previous Champion would handle things though. There was no precedent for a ten year old earning the right to be the League's leader and top wet works agent. Mama had set the previous record across all regions when she'd won her own title.

At least the upcoming release of Red Technology's Avatar all purpose device was coming up just in time to capitalize on the publicity from the Conference and my challenge to the Elite Four and the Champion. With our parents' help we were poised to corner the fucking market. Move over Silph, there's going to be a bigger fish. Our mothers had seen the genius in our idea to essentially build up an enormous spy network out of the devices with server farms of Porygons trawling through the data. After thoroughly black boxing the technology and software, of course. Honestly, that had taken more than the actual design and setup. Big Sister was coming to the pokeworld.

We'd set our mind to come up with upgrades, and we had a few that built on father's abomination to turn the disgusting things into something extremely useful. Forget high-end haptics, the Avatar-Psi was building up to be fucking next level. Well, as soon as I got over my fear of putting psionic technology anywhere on my person. We'd spent hours tinkering with the things to make sure they could never be turned against us. As things stood, we found a couple way to improve performance for our purposes and further decrease any ability to negatively impact me. There would be no fucking Sword Art Online bullshit happening here.

We built our ace in the hole into the chokers holding my Key Stone and Luna's Mega Stone, as well as the psionic control interface for the Avatar-P. It felt wrong to use it, even knowing that we'd made it, that it was safer than safe, when the last time I'd had devices stuck to my skin had led to a very close near death experience and left me mildly crippled. So it was with trepidation that we activated the Psionic Control and Amplification Interface Modules we'd placed over our cheekbones, and the Central Psionic Processing Unit in our chokers. Technology for the fucking win, we guessed. If pushing our combat precognition to its limits pushed my brain and nervous system to its own, then why not add more brain and nervous system to the equation?

The world expanded around us, the devices taking in he deluge of information my brain normally handled and processed it for ease of use. We'd been blind but now we could see. The infinity of futures was instantly sorted into the most useful ones, the extremes in sensory overload rendered down to a useful feed. Next stage would be to use the interface to optimize attacks into perfection. We had the power to spam our deadliest Psychics, but we didn't have the ability to shape them quickly enough.

They'd burn out fairly quickly, probably wouldn't last five minutes at full blast, but five minutes may be the difference between victory and death. In less high impact situations, they did the job of a heads up display and computer assisted aiming and predictive software unassisted by psionics. In a pinch, it could be combined with combat precognition to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Next time a legendary tried to kill us, we'd be ready. We should probably make extras though.

Mewtwo was too much of a danger, and we would take every advantage we could manage to ensure its threat was nullified, one way or another, and if things went the way we remembered, Mew would be there too. Every advantage we could scrape together, every dirty trick, every cheat, everything, we could be take and throw at Mewtwo. We'd driven to extinction the inhabitants of Cerulean Cave and left it a dead wasteland. Their souls going to feeding our army of Gengars and ourselves. We would drown the motherfucker in ghosts and eldritch abominations. We'd visit Mt. Silver next. The strongest psychics were coming, and we needed to be ready.

I was barely human anymore, we could feel it, but we could feel it most starkly every time we let our power loose. I was colder and colder, and the shadows that had started manifesting were becoming more pervasive. We could see into them, a void that brought to mind the unreality between souls and the place we traveled through when I teleported. My Teleports had steadily become more and more akin to what our ghosts did when they disappeared. It had become effortless, to a level we could likely finally use it in combat. Guess I'd never really come back from that first death, not fully. Maybe not at all depending on how the bond between us worked.

Ah well, that just meant we were even bigger eldritch abominations than we already believed ourselves to be. Nothing relevant had changed, really, and when we heard the news that Viridian Gym was reopening, we knew the time had come.

Giovanni Vittore would die.

We Teleported to Viridian first thing in the morning, ten minutes later we walked through the door to possibly one of the most dangerous fights we'd ever be in. The place was deserted, and we didn't see a single soul until we reached the arena. The bastard was there, smug and pleased as you like, not a wrinkle in his tailored suit.

"Here to challenge me, little girl? Aren't you a bit out of you league?"

"We certainly weren't when we dealt with your base in Celadon, or the takeover in Saffron, or when we put a knife in your side." And wasn't that just the perfect way to get him to go full on psycho?

"You! Mewtwo kill that whore!"

"What if Mewtwo doesn't want to kill us?"

"Mewtwo will do what I tell it to! I am its master!"

It was almost too easy, really. Hardest part was keeping Mewtwo from pasting Giovanni while it threw a hissy fit, which let us tell you, is really hard to do when you can't stop laughing at someone else's idiocy. Fucking prideful idiots. Mewtwo didn't even pay us a lick of attention after we hid the majority of our power.

By the time the cloned wonder ragequit the scene, everything was in ruins, but we had Giovanni, and we had fourteen Gengars in our shadow. We were sure at least one of them would manage to hollow out his body and ride him like a meat puppet with a poisonous gaseous center. The operation was akin to the breaking of Ozai, but this time we had to make sure to destroy the parts of the Rocket Boss we didn't want our Gengar to have. Like ambition, or wishes, desires, and dreams that didn't boil down to pleasing us and mindlessly obeying us. Really, it was going to be a shell of a man, dedicated to the greater glory of Red Azuluna. Learning how to permanently imprint psychic commands into things was a huge advantage, and one that was serving us well.

Crime couldn't be exterminated without impossible measures, so instead we were going to control it. We'd have a few more of our Gengars wear other Rockets in high places to make sure our grip on the organization was ironclad. Team Rocket got a bad end and they couldn't have deserved it more. We directed a thought at him, and he released a Rhyperior. We released Zeus. May as well observe formalities.

Fire burst around our fire rooster and it damn near flash stepped into a devastating kick to the Drill pokemon's left arm. The protective rock armor cracked, and the arm looked to have been rendered unusable. It wasn't without cost though, and the other arm sent Zeus smashing into the gym wall. He got up, and a Fire Blitz exploded into Rhyperior's chest with enough strength to return the favor, except in this instance the Drill pokemon went through the wall. It jumped from the other side, making another hole, and took a shattering kick to it's stomach on the way down, making a third hole in the wall. This time it didn't get up. Our first thrall threw an Earth Badge at us, and we gave it it's marching order.

"Well then Giovanni, keep us informed, will you? And make sure to freak out the idiot trio when they come in to report to you, yeah?"

"Yes Mistresses."

"Good boy."

We Teleported in during breakfast, the news about Viridian Gym's near destruction playing on the television screen. Judging by the looks we were getting from our mothers, we suspected they thought we had something to do with it. That was likely going to be an awkward conversation. What's the best way of saying you just expanded the number of bodies you permanently inhabit simultaneously to three? And that you're now de facto leader of the biggest criminal organization in the continent?


	58. Conquest 11

AN: Dubiously alive loli-meat is adorable at her crush.

Conquest 3.11

Apparently the questions about our recent criminal activities boiled down to "Why?" and the answer "Rocket Boss was there." was sufficient. Who knew this openness and honesty thing was so easy? Gary and Ash challenged for their Earth Badge a couple days later, and Gengar Vittore was satisfied with their performance, though we made sure not to look at the memories of the fights. We wanted some surprises, after all.

We meditated on the future, trying to make sense of what was coming and testing out the limits of our new devices. It came to us just as the amplifiers on my cheekbones burnt out, and the interior of the control interface around my neck melted, fortunately not as spectacularly as the first time. The whole thing with Mewtwo would happen after the Conference. The flashback inspired panic attack should have been something we expected, but it still caught us by surprise. We called Marina, Teleported to her by line of sight through the video phone, and spent a couple hours attached to her side with burnt pieces of tech attached to me.

We woke up warm, comfortable, and safe. It was perfect, and we couldn't help burrowing into the delicious comfy warmness at our side, arms tight around us pulling us deeper. We breathed in deeply, taking in a citrusy scent. A few tears slipped out. Right now, at this very moment, everything was right with the world.

"You girls are very huggable." Said Marina into the top of my head.

"You can hug us anytime you like. We're yours, completely." What. Mouth, what the fuck? Why would you say that without checking in with the brain, mouth?

"Are you now?" And her tone of voice had us burying our face in her chest and blushing so hard we probably glowed in the dark. She giggled, and kissed the top of our heads. "Come on, I have to win my Storm Badge today and that won't happen if you keep using me as a pillow. We can go to the beach to celebrate afterwards."

Truly a dilemma for the ages. To let go of Marina, or not to let go of Marina. We couldn't decide the correct course of action, so we defaulted to what we were already doing and hugged her more. She responded by getting up with us still attached to her, though there was a brief moment when we almost fell off due to lack of upper body strength. Our legs saved us and we were now firmly in place around her waist.

"You know, I think you might need to see a doctor. You're way too light."

"We're working on it, but we've had a lot of trouble putting on weight, especially after the morphine, and the lungs, and… okay so maybe we've been a bit rough on my body, but it's really hard to eat so much."

"Mhmm. You know, if you don't let go, I'm going to walk into the shower like this and turn on the water." We let go with a squeak, and then took the advantage by rushing the bathroom. First shower was ours. "Damnit Azula!"

We took care of our battered body in the shower. Downing whatever the hell the magic wonder pills that kept my lungs from turning completely into huge useless lumps of scar tissue. The hot water felt amazing against my cold skin, and we abused our psychic power to maintain steady contact with it all over our bodies while also keeping the shampoo from washing away from my hair. How the fuck did other people with long hair manage? Sure, I was probably on the extreme end of things since mine was reaching ankle length now, but we remembered it was just as difficult when it was waist length.

My hands ran down my body, memorizing the feel, committing to memory what I had, and what would likely change soon. I was ten. On the edge of truly starting to grow up. Soon changes would start happening, I would start growing, urges and needs and necessities would develop. My past life barely remembered those years, they were suppressed and damaged and we could barely get glimpses of memories from the time period. For all intents and purposes, she had little experience to offer us, to offer me. It was daunting, terrifying. We'd taken every step in this new life backed by the knowledge and experience of my predecessor, but now we were coming up against something with which she couldn't help us.

We floated clean clothing in through a crack in the door, drying ourselves with an application of our temperature control, and dressing while wondering what I'd look like in three years, in five, in ten. Could we _See_ ahead? It was something that was going to happen, but if our instincts were right, and what our doctors and Lucky-tchii had told us was correct, then we had already altered the natural course of the future with regards to my physical appearance. Trying to see ahead for that purpose would likely end in pain and frustration. Should we even bother? What would be the point, really? It would happen, and short of some truly insane ideas that we were unwilling to even consider, it was something that we couldn't stop or change.

We walked out and Marina took her turn at the shower. Yes. There really was no point in worrying about my impending teenage years. I came from good stock, and it was likely impossible for me to end up being anything but perfection given a new form. Teenage Azuluna problems were for Teenage Azuluna to deal with, not us. Twenty minutes later we were walking out of the Pokemon Center. We cut quite the image, her blue to our red, her Little Miss to sis.

The Cianwood Gym was very similar to Fuschia's, though with less ninjas and more regular martial artists, and a more laid back fun atmosphere. It was really quite an improvement over the last few gyms we'd visited. The leader, Chuck, was the kind of enthusiastic that brought to mind half remembered memories of green jumpsuits and the springtime of youth, whatever that was. Before we knew it, we were having breakfast with him and his students at a long table. And no, we totally didn't eat a double portion because Marina practically force fed it to me. And we totally did not enjoy her feeding us. And we were totally not blushing, damnit.

Fuck everything. Our image was so totally ruined.

"You're cute when you pout."

We made a facial expression of petulant annoyance by pushing our lips forwards which was most definitely not a pout.

"Come on, dorks. I want to fight Leader Chuck so we can have a nice day out afterwards."

We followed Chuck to a dojo hall and one of his aides ran Marina's pokedex through a scanner, activating the arena's systems.

"Pokemon Trainer Ddraig challenges Gym Leader Chuck. This shall be a two pokemon match. Trainers, please send out your pokemon."

"Let's do this, Wani-Wani!" Her Totodile had grow up to be a mighty Feraligatr and had kept all the cutesy 'tude it'd had when small.

"Poliwrath!" Chuck's overgrown tadpole had muscle on top of muscle. It was ripped as fuck. "Body Slam!"

"Dodge and Slash!"

Poliwrath moved with speed and almost nailed Wani-Wani, but the Feraligatr slid to the side at the last second and ripped its claws through its back. The tadpole spun on a dime and landed a solid punch to Wani-Wani's jaw, knocking it down. Poliwrath followed through with another Body Slam, but Wani-Wani rolled out from under it and going for a Crunch. When its jaws actually closed on Poliwrath's arm, we knew it was all over but the crying, and Wani-Wani went into a death roll that resulted in a lot of snapping bones before Chuck recalled his pokemon.

"Poliwrath is unable to battle, please send out your next pokemon."

"Go, Machoke, Submission!"

The wrestler pokemon wasted no time in hitting Wani-Wani like a wrecking ball, and then they were both a blur of motion, one trying for another death roll and the other trying to manhandle a big reptile into submission. The fight ended with a double knockout, with Wani-Wani finally managing to properly start rotating, and one of the Machoke's massive fists hitting its head with the combined strength of it's muscles and the rotation of the roll.

"Both pokemon are unable to battle. Winner: Pokemon Trainer Ddraig."

Chuck was exuberant in defeat, and gave Marina her shiny new badge. She was at six out of eight. We couldn't wait to see her fight at the Silver Conference. After she healed her pokemon, we looked around for a nice beach and then spent a few hours playing around in the sand and water. We had a small dinner in the Pokemon Center, and crawled into the tiny twin bed together. Sleep was quick to come in Marina's arms.

We Teleported Marina back to Ecruteak, as it was the closest city to her next Gym that we'd been to. We had to go back home now, and Marina had to continue her journey. We didn't want to part ways. We hugged her in a moment that seemed eternal but was only a few minutes.

"I'll see you soon, 'Zula." She said into our hair, hugging us tighter.

It was now or never!

We lifted on the tips our toes and kissed her, our hands resting on the back of her head and neck. We tasted surprise and then affection as she melted into the kiss. So what if we were young, we had decades ahead of us. Eternity laid in that kiss, ahead of us and beyond, and we would never be able to drink our fill. We separated, the both of us blushing heavily, before we stole another kiss and faded away to our room in the compound.

We threw ourselves on our bed, squealing into our pillow and rolling around in our bed out of sheer unadulterated joy. We'd kissed Marina and she'd kissed us back! We continued to squee and roll around until Mom poked her head in without knocking, ostensibly to see what all the racket was all about, and witnessed us completely spazzing out over our first kiss. We stared at her, a brilliant blush on our faces, she stared back at us, a grin slowly building the longer she stared. We could practically feel her mom senses tingling. She wasn't going to let this pass, we could tell.


	59. Conquest 12

Conquest 3.12

"So, babies, what's got you so… animated?" Our Mom was a mighty foe of considerable investigative and intellectual prowess. We hadn't been wrong all those years ago when we'd guessed that she was the golden girl of the family who'd gotten all the good genes. Truly, keeping our kiss secret from her would be a supremely difficult endeavor, but as future Champions and the greatest psychics to ever live, we were more than up to the task.

"Uh, we were, uh, training."

"Training, is it? That what you kids are calling it these days?"

We choked on air. What?!

"How?! I mean, what are you talking about?"

She was laughing at us now, and I was starting to feel a little faint from blushing so hard.

"You don't use lip gloss baby."

We squeaked, our hands covering my mouth, a muffled "Oh…" slipping out. It was time for a strategic spot of denial. A brief application of our psychic power and we were ensconced in a cocoon of blankets. We were checking out from reality until the Conference came about or our mothers forgot about this whole thing, whichever came first.

"Oh, babies, don't be like that." We felt the bed shift and then she picked up our blanket cocoon and hugged us to her. "There's nothing wrong with kissing a girl you like. I mean, it's a bit amusing considering how much you protested that you didn't have a crush on her, but hey, you wouldn't be the first to do so. A lot of my sisters were like that about things. Now come out of there and we can talk."

Mom was very convincing, so we turned the blanket cocoon into a blanket burrito.

"So, what'd you do baby girls?"

We weren't sure we could speak without embarrassing ourselves further, so we pressed the knowledge and memories into her mind. She shuddered hard and flicked our nose.

"I didn't need to have a driver's seat to the memory of you kissing her."

Oh. Yes, that was probably very awkward.

"So, when are you bringing Marina around again?" We sensed an ulterior motive behind that question…

"Don't know."

"You're no fun. Alright, let's go get some ice cream or something. Not every day you get your first kiss."

Obviously Mom told Mama and Gardemom, and then somehow Daisy found out, and if the extremely fucking weird and awkward conversation about girls father tried to have with us was any indication, he also knew. It was embarrassing. We put our foot down when Gary tried teasing us about it though. We reminded him that yes, in fact, we'd kissed a girl and we liked it, and that he couldn't say he'd ever done any such thing yet. That shut him up quick. Our skill in Oak Baiting was still top notch.

We gave Marina one of our prototype Avatar smartphones so we could teleport to her by line of sight anytime we wanted to, or video phone without her having to be at a Pokemon Center. Needless to say, we visited often while we left most of our team training on its own at the compound. That's how we managed to get front row seats to something dramatic as fuck.

The aide that escorted us through to the Blackthorn Gym arena was the same one from when we won our badge, and he clearly remembered the thorough thrashing we'd given Clair's team. So he was very surprised to see us back, until he looked at Marina and then he gave catching flies an honest go. He stuttered all through her challenge, kept looking at her while we walked to the arena and didn't stop right up until he opened the door for us. Clair had a small table in the corner of the room, and was reading what we assumed to be reports or news. She started speaking without looking up.

"First challenger of the day, huh? Give me a moment, need to finish these up..." She looked up, just a quick acknowledgement of our presence, and in doing so her gaze had gotten stuck on Marina. At first there was incomprehension in her eyes, like she couldn't understand what she was seeing, then a desperate longing the likes of which we'd never seen before. "You!"

She ran up to Marina, falling to her knees and taking her face in her hands. Marina herself was a bit too freaked out to do anything more than freeze up. We'd have to train that out of her. She needed to always be ready for surprises, even seemingly innocent ones like this one.

"What's your name?"

"U-um, M-Marina, Marina Ddraig."

Clair made the sort of choked sound that made me think she was this close to breaking out in tears and a picture started forming in my mind. Clair pulled a small wallet from the back of her romper, opening and showing us a picture of a woman a little older than Clair herself, who looked like an older Marina. Holy shit but this seemed to be shaping up to be exactly what we'd first thought when we fought Clair.

"Do you know who this is?" Clair's voice was desperate, and Marina was starting look and feel very overwhelmed.

"Th-that's my mom when she was younger. I-I have that same photo in my bag."

"Where is she?!" We'd been ready to let things play out without interfering, but the moment Clair grabbed Marina by the shoulders and started shaking her we drew a line. Power surged, a small cold snap coming from us, and shadows that couldn't exist grabbed her arms and pulled, before gently shoving her back.

"We suggest you calm down, Leader Clair. You're upsetting Marina." Well damn, the creepy eldritch abomination voice and ambiance was starting to creep into my actions without meaning to. At least Marina associated it with protection and good things, so hearing us calmed her down a little. The look Clair gave us though was tantamount to a declaration of intent to murder us, but we'd faced a lot better from a lot worse and she really needed to up her death glare game.

"This girl is the spitting image of my missing older sister, I will not calm down!"

"Since I know Marina's mom is alive and well, and you and your family are more than a little renowned, I would hazard a guess that the only reason she's missing is that she wants to be missing. So, Leader Clair, any reason your sister would rather have nothing to do with her family, even at the expense of having no contact with her sister?"

"She-"

"I-I challenge you for the Rising Badge, Leader Clair." Marina had steadied herself and she was now ignoring the fuckhuge pink elephant in the room in favor of doing what she was trained to do, what she knew how to do.

"But-"

"Challenge. You."

"I… Okay."

The aide whose memory we'd been correcting to a more private state stepped forward and scanned Marina's Avatar, triggering the the arena's systems.

"Pokemon Trainer Ddraig challenges Gym Leader Clair for the Rising badge." It halted, waiting for Clair to set the terms of the fight. She must have had a remote of some kind. "This will be a two pokemon match with no substitutions. Trainers, send out your pokemon."

"Go, Wani-Wani!"

"Dragonair." Was our beautiful teal goddess pressing for a fight on purpose? Clair had no fight in her and she sounded like she was about to cry. Strong or not, unburdened by a ridiculous type disadvantage or not, we didn't think she could win this fight if she were using Lance's Champion team. "Twister."

"Blizzard!" Wani-Wani's gust of razor sharp icy wind slammed into Dragonair like a wrecking ball, and it was half-frozen to a wall before Clair shouted a command and a Thunderbolt lanced towards Marina's Feraligatr. It drew a roar of pain from him, but didn't stop spitting out ice until Dragonair was an ice statue.

"Return. Gyarados, Thrash."

"Deathroll!"

Ever see a fuckhuge water serpent dragon thing and a fuckhuge alligator thing try their very best to rip chunks off of each other? Nothing we said could do it justice short of sharing the memory, but there were a lot of roars and lots of fucking blood flying around. It was a display of unadulterated violence the likes of which was rarely seen. It ended with Wani-Wani slamming against a wall with some nasty snapping sounds, and Gyarados trying to keep going at him for all of a second before it collapsed mid lunge. Recall lights went out, and the aide handed Marina her badge. Clair looked like her brain was mid blue screen of death and Marina was giving off some pretty strong signs that she didn't want to be anywhere near here.

We stepped from where we were standing to next to her and took her hand. She wanted to leave, but we sensed this was kind of a big fucking deal. When she hugged us like her life depended on it we made our choice. Sis Teleported out with her to the Pokemon Center in the city, checking into a room and dragging her there. I turned to Clair, she was on her knees and looked like she'd lost the last thing of value she had in her life, eyes fixed where Marina had been. I stepped beside her and triggered the new amplifiers on my cheekbones and neck, looking at so many futures in an instant, pulling as much information as we could. They burnt out again, but we'd expected that and held back the flare of terror it caused. We knew what to say.

"Give her time. You scared her, and she loves her mother. She's smart enough speculate on why her mother would willingly disappear. Whatever it was that forced her to do that, you better make sure it stops being a factor before you do anything else. Your aide won't remember anything, and the security systems won't have anything about what happened, we made sure of that. Here's our number."

We gave her a burner number for a disposable line to my Avatar-P, mentally telling Porygon to assign the first number to call it the designation of Leader Clair. It's only paranoia when you don't know how fucked up everything is. Even when you control the biggest criminal organization in two regions. The Dragon Clan was powerful, and whatever the fuck was going on merited a certain degree of caution.

We took a step into the room sis had acquired for us. There was no point in pretending I was Teleporting anymore. Not after the frost and the shadows. I was stepping through the space ghosts went into when they weren't in reality. We needed to look at our souls again, because doing ghost things without meaning to while ostensibly still being alive could not be good. My presence was becoming more otherworldly and forbidding than Ozai's too. He didn't cause cold and eldritch shadows half as strongly as I did.

The three of us settled into a bundle of blankets. Marina didn't say anything, didn't need to. She was shook up by meeting an aunt she'd never known she had, plus all of the added complications to the matter. Eventually she did the smart thing and called her mother. Clearly she, like sis, was more level headed that I was, what with doing communication and openness and stuff. Clarissa Ddraig managed to calm her daughter down by reassuring her that everything would be okay because she'd make it okay if she had to, and really she was a strong trainer in her own right with powerful friends.

Apparently she'd paid attention when her daughter talked about staying at Professor Oak's lab and being friends with the daughter of Sinnoh's youngest champion. She'd already had a plan in place if Marina was recognized, she said, and the addition of our little power bloc just made it easier. Now we, Marina included, just needed to find out what the fuck the whole fucking drama was about, because Marina's mom hadn't been forthcoming.


	60. Conquest 13

Conquest 3.13

We woke up before Marina did, and used the time to have a go at figuring out what the fuck was up with the Dragon Clan. We used sis' body. She was tiny and easy to miss, and she had an easier time slipping out of the cuddle pile. Marina had me completely locked down, but at least my face was someplace super nice and her hands apparently got grabby when she slept. We were sure as fuck not complaining or doing anything to change that particular state of affairs.

Still, ninja Ralts. No one would ever suspect sis to be trained in how to do bullshit ninja magic, which just made us deadlier when using her body. We Teleported inside the Blackthorn Gym, directly into the arena, and scanned Porygon into their network. Sis' Mega Stone choker had a psionic control interface, and while we couldn't download data from our AI directly, it could send it to the choker and we could download it from there. We fucking loved technology. Psionic tech especially. Who needed wetware when we could just use psionic amplifiers and extra machine processing power?

Their defense Porygons were good, but we only needed the physical security disabled, and they were focused on defending the data servers. Clair was here in a different room. Did she live in the Gym? Didn't really matter. We crushed the cameras and microphones near her room and in the arena before retrieving our little AI that could and Teleporting in on Clair. She was a mess, an empty bottle of vodka on the floor next to her passed out body. We seemed to have an alarming tendency to encounter or cause situations that led to people passing out drunk. Well, she wasn't waking up anytime soon. Snacks then. We were in and out in minutes and then we climbed her empty bed and sprawled on her pillow.

Wonder who'd wake up first?

Turns out the answer is Clair. Because someone knocked very insistently on her door while loudly asking if she was okay, and that she was really late. The growled "Fuck off and leave me alone." had us wondering if she had actual dragon pokemon blood or something, somehow. Then she did the usual hungover pained groan and writhing in agony thing. Well, press for advantage, yeah?

"Ra-Ralts."

She jumped and turned to face us in one swift motion, looking super fierce and ready for everything, for all of a second. Then when all she saw was a tiny Ralts lazing around on her pillow the hangover caught up with her and she ran for her bathroom. Then it was some rather nasty sounds coming through the open door. Heh. She flushed and then ran the tap before coming out with the funniest hungover deathglare we'd ever seen. Funny because we weren't the ones suffering.

"You. How did you get here and where is my niece?"

"Ralts."

"The fuck it's none of my business, she's my niece."

"Ralts."

"I had nothing to do with that, I didn't even know it was happening, I was seven!" The sheer hatred with which she said that was eye opening. It was the kind of hatred that drove people to brutally murder someone, the kind of hatred that burrowed deep into one's soul and drove them insane. Just being reminded of as much as we had was already unhinging her sanity.

This… was unexpected. Very unexpected, and anything that evoked a response on this level was something we needed to know about right the fuck now. The mental spike we sent into her mind was subtle, exploratory, to see what we'd have to deal with. It found a mind falling apart, whatever defenses she may have had lay in shambles as fundamental parts at the core of her self shifted and broke and restructured themselves into new shapes. We found her memory of when we'd left. She'd called her cousin Lance, the current Champion, she screamed at him, demanded answers to questions she didn't even have yet. Why her sister had disappeared, why she'd suddenly had a niece pop up out of nowhere at her Gym, why, why, why.

She'd screamed herself hoarse at Lance and he hadn't said a thing. Then when Clair could only sob at the videophone terminal Lance had asked her if she really wanted to know. That he knew and he wished he didn't. She'd gone a little mad then, her memories were hazy and we could only imagine she'd screamed at her cousin some more. Then Lance had told her of the depredations the clan leaders had visited on the younger members, of the ways mad power drunk old men had defiled and abused the children they should have been protecting. He'd been _detailed_ in explaining what had been done to him, to her sister, to others.

He'd told her of how her sister had snapped during a particularly monstrous session and killed one of them in the middle of the act. How she'd disappeared with several elder dragons belonging to the clan leaders. How Lance had taken the opportunity presented by the sudden loss of most of their greatest weapons to seize control and imprison them all in the deepest pits of the Dragon Den he could find. How everyone that lived inside their once sacred caves was there on pain of a tortuous death if they ever tried to leave and forbidden to speak about what had happened. The public had never learned of it, and the animals were still alive only so there wouldn't be more rumors about the clan, so the reputation of the clan wouldn't be tarnished.

And then he'd told her she was forbidden of speaking about it with anyone, of acting on the information she'd just learned, or of reaching out to her sister or niece. That if she disobeyed she'd be imprisoned with the rest until all danger to the Dragon Clan had passed, or forever if she became a danger to the clan herself.

Our grasp on our power had snapped at some point when reliving her memories. Her room and our room at the Pokemon Center were freezing cold, hoarfrost and mist covering everything. Boiling shadows seemed to cover everything and swallow all light, hateful faces trying push out through them. Our Gengars sensed our agitation, sensed our desire to go into the Dragon Den and slaughter everyone inside.

We would have.

Marina had woken up to our power lashing out around her, she'd clutched us to her, frightened at first, then worried when she realized it was us. She'd called our name but we'd been fully in sis' body. She shook us a little and it jolted our consciousness partly back into my body. Our eyes focused, we saw her beautiful worried face, so concerned about us, unaware of the atrocities that lay in her family's history. We took it all in and hugged her. We cried into her chest because for all they we wanted to forget what we'd learned, we couldn't allows ourselves to. We made Clair sleep while we hugged Marina, soothed her mind and put it together as best we could, just like sis had done so often for me. Her mind would heal better while sleeping. We Teleported back to our room, and turned our hug into a cuddlepile again.

We needed to decide if we were going to massacre Marina's blood relatives.

"Talk to me 'Zula, I'm worried. What happened?"

"We visited Clair while you were still asleep." She stiffened against us.

"What did she say?"

"We… we don't think you want to know. We don't want to know. We want to destroy those memories, we want to make Clair forget too. She probably wants to forget. Your mom probably wishes she could forget."

Our words scared her, and at that very moment we were glad that she listened to us, that she thought highly of our opinion, because she didn't jump into demanding we tell her. Instead she thought about it, about what could possibly be so horrible that we wanted to forget it. It was good that nothing she could imagine was even a fraction as bad as the truth.

"If I asked you to tell me, would you?"

"Yes. We would hate ourselves for doing so, we would desperately ask you that you reconsider, but we would tell you."

"Okay." She squeezed us, acceptance and worry flowing from her.

"Hypothetically speaking, if someone were to, say, release a legendary beast in the Dragon Den with full knowledge that if they were to do so it would kill everyone inside, would you try to stop them?"

We had to ask. They were her blood, for better or worse

"Is it really that bad?" She'd taken our face in her hands and she looked deep into our eyes. We nodded, slipping from her grip and burying our faces in her chest. What they'd done… we couldn't think of anything worse, couldn't imagine more heinous atrocities. We cried on her. We couldn't help it. We'd almost managed to forget the visions we'd had about the Rockets, the ones from before we'd grown powerful enough to make them impossible, before we'd taken them over from the inside out. What Giovanni had done to us in them… We wanted to forget. I wanted to walk into the Center's storage area and take all the morphine they had until the world was a blur of warmth and chemical bliss.

"Are they a danger to others?"

We shook our heads against her, shaking and sobbing against her.

"Are they suffering?"

We nodded.

We couldn't lose control. No one could take it from us. Not anymore. We had an army, we had our Gengars, we'd mastered and controlled all psionic technology. We were unassailable now, and we'd murder anyone who tried to take it away from us.

"Then don't. Not because they don't deserve it, but because they're not worth it, and this way they'll have however long they live to suffer more."

She was stroking our hair with one hand and scratching our front horn with the other. We fell asleep to her breathing, exhausted and spent.


	61. Conquest 13M

AN: So I think this is a semi-canon omake. Semi because if memory serves it screws up the timeline. If it doesn't and I'm misremembering, then by all means count it as fully canon.

Conquest 3.13M

We woke up to soft whispers.

"I miss you so much Mama."

"I miss you too honey." Came a choked voice through the speaker of Marina's Avatar. "How is your journey going so far?"

"I got my eight badge the other day." Our teal goddess needed to get herself a better poker face. We weren't even looking at her and we could feel the tension in her. Well, okay, we were psychic, but still, our point stood. "It was interesting."

"O-Oh? W-What Gym did you challenge?" Yeah, there was no mistaking the emotion in Clarissa Ddraig's voice. She was dreading the next words to come out of her daughter's mouth. Clearly she, like us, could think of only one reason for Marina to act the way she was about something that she should be both used to and happy about.

"Blackthorn."

"R-Really? W-Wow. It's supposed to be the most d-difficult."

"I met my aunt."

The sound that escaped the woman who'd single-handedly facilitated the destruction of one of the vilest rings of abuse and exploitation set our power to boiling under our grasp. What was that phrase we really felt like putting to action? Ah, yes, "Oh boy, here we go killing again!" But no, not yet.

"How?"

"Mama, she looks like she's my sister. She recognized me on sight." Clearly as rattled as Marina was she still had her spirit.

"You… you're okay though, yes? Lance… he said he'd made things right but- but they're still-" She cut herself off.

"I'm okay Mama. 'Zula came with me. She said she talked with Clair."

"Oh." And wasn't that an astounding amount of emotion and meaning packed into a single word? "D-Do you know…?"

"'Zula said I didn't want to know, that everyone involved probably didn't want to know, but that she'd tell me if I asked her to."

"Don't."

"Is it really so bad?" An opportunity to make a good impression and meet our future mother in law! Excellent.

"I want to fucking let my Gengars eat the whole lot of them. And rob a liquor store." We mumbled into Marina's chest, cuddling into her. We really could get used to waking up like this.

Marina squeaked. It was the most adorable and cute squeak of embarrassment ever uttered in the history of humanity. We could practically see her turning bright red. We couldn't help the smirks that came to our faces.

"Honey, who was that?"

"That, uh, that'd be Azula, Mama." We reached with our power and gently tipped the phone to point the camera at us.

"Hello, Marina's mom." We disengaged briefly from our marvelous pillows to smile and greet her properly. "A pleasure to finally meet you."

"Oh, um, yes, a pleasure. Thank you for taking such good care of my daughter."

"Anything for her."

Marina yanked her phone back to her face.

"It was great talking to you mother I'll see you soon call you later bye."

Truly, we were masters at making things better. We'd headed off heartache, made a great impression, and we had Marina to cuddle. Only thing that could make this whole thing better was food.

"You suck."

"If you want us to."

The noise of frustration that comment drew from her was beautiful.

We may have issues. More issues. Whatever.


	62. Conquest 14

Conquest 3.14

We talked with Clair before we left for New Bark Town, mostly to reassure her that if anyone ever tried to put her in the cave we'd break her out. She was a little sceptical, since, you know, Lance, but she did remember the stomping she got from us, so she felt a little reassured, not to mention her sister likely still had all of the dragons she'd reappropriated. We weren't sure about other siblings, but if anyone ever imprisoned either of us, the other would murderfuck their way through anyone until both were free. We could only assume Clarissa Ddraig would at least try something similar, except with more dragons and less eldritch abominations and murder ghosts.

Couldn't be sure though, so we made sure to call father and mother and inform them of the situation, just in case. Let's see Lance try to take on Mama, Gardemom, and father. We were a little annoyed that she wasn't as reassured by us as she was by our parents, but it couldn't be helped yet. We still left a Gengar in Blackthorn Gym, also just in case. Hopefully Marina's mom would reach out to her little sis. We couldn't imagine what their separation was like.

Our meeting with the woman who'd given birth to perfection given form was awkward. For a variety of reasons. Not the least of which was the fucking atrocities perpetrated against her that we could fucking feel despite actively trying not to. Still, she was a loving woman, and she clearly loved her daughter. We left a pair of Gengars there too, also just in case. The leader of the Dragon Clan had not made a good impression, even if it hadn't been first hand, even if we didn't have a read on his mind when he'd said what he had… We couldn't afford to trust him, not with this, not when it involved Marina.

We left, even though we didn't want to, because apparently the President of the League Competition Committee wanted to speak to us, and Clarissa didn't want Marina to leave so soon after coming back home, especially not after having dealt with her family. So we were going home alone, where Charles Goodshow would meet us.

Hm.

We could Teleport. We could spend the night in New Bark and go home in the morning. So we did exactly that. Somehow we managed to still be late to the 11:00 AM meeting. It was totally not because of breakfast with the Ddraig family or snuggling with Marina. The official story was that we were very tired and overslept. Judging by the looks our mothers gave us they didn't buy it for a second. Pout. We could totally be tired and undersleeping! We were irresponsible children, it was our nature! I even had the bags under my eyes and everything from all the nightmares and stuff.

Ah well.

We walked into the compound's living room where we found President Goodman chatting away with father and Mama. It occurred to us that they both knew the man, what with both being past Champions. We walked in and sat down without anyone noticing. Combined ninja and near death experience stealth modes made it damn near impossible to spot us if we didn't want to be.

"Your daughter must be a remarkable girl, Asami. She's not even eleven and already she's shattering all sorts of records. Truly remarkable." He shook his head. "Though I wish you hadn't gotten her files classified so high, when I saw a starting trainer registered so quickly, I couldn't wait to see their records, but all I could access was her name and everything else said to contact Samuel here."

"She's always been more than a bit precocious when it comes to training and battling." Mama smiled one of those smiles that lit up the world, the ones we lived to see. "She and Luna have been training since… I can't really remember how young they started. Must have been two or three, though at the time it was more game than training."

True. It had started as play, sort of, we'd tried to do both from the start. Probably. We didn't really remember that far back that well.

"I didn't even know you had a daughter though. You more or less disappeared after you became Champion and only came out of hiding to deal with big issues."

"Yes, well, we were worried for our daughters' safety." Then she blushed. "And then there's the issue of how young I was."

"Hm. True. I hadn't thought about either of those things." The old man was solemn, but then a sly grin curved his mouth. "So, Hammer of Sinnoh, who's the father?"

"I'm not telling. If he wants to say it's up to him."

"Father filled his name in on my Trainer Registration, so really you just have to wait until next month when our records get declassified for the Conference to find out." We would fucking never get tired of doing that to people. They fucking jumped out of their seats when we started talking.

"Azula Luna, stop doing that." Err, maybe we should limit it to people who were not Mama. Or Gardemom. Or Mom.

Charles Goodshow stared at us. We felt a whirlwind of emotions coming from him. Surprise, incredulity, concern, worry, realization. His mind was better than most. He'd taken one look at us and in an instant he'd drawn conclusion. Some correct, some wrong, but the speed with which he'd done it was something to behold. Not for the first time, we were grateful for the flowy design of our jacket. Who knew what kind of ideas he'd get about us if he saw our Haunter scars or how thin and small we really were.

Then his eyes narrowed and he turned to look at father, then back at us. Heh. Goodshow had likely known father when he was young, younger than when Mama had met him. His eyebrows climbed up into his hairline. We took after Mama very much, and our red hair was much, much redder than father's, but there were far too many clues in place for a mind as sharp as his not to put it together.

"I see."

"So you do."

"Well, regardless of the subject of your sire," And here he paused to smirk at father. "I wished to offer you the honor of carrying Moltres' fire to light the central torch."

Hello.

This was unexpected.

Unexpected, and very much welcome. It would give us an excellent opportunity do some shameless self-promotion of our Avatar phones. They were already selling well, but after the news coverage of us advertising for our company during prime time of the league opening ceremony, followed by us winning the Conference and smashing our way through the Elite Four and the Champion? Yeah, this was going to be fucking perfect. We needed to get together with our tailor and have her make new jackets with our company logo sewn onto them, as well as add it to our torn and bloodstained ones. We had an idea about what we were going to wear to the finals and afterwards.

Overdramatic? Us? Perish the thought.

"We'd be delighted to." We said with a bright smile. We were always happy to do things that contributed to our greater glory.


	63. Conquest 15

AN: Sorry this took so long. Have fun with Azula being Azula.

Conquest 3.15

We got to the Indigo Plateau by way of blue fire, and this time we had our phone and headphones with which to listen to music on the way. We got there four days before the start to do rehearsal on the ceremonial lighting of the flames and to scope out the competition already there. It helped I was a tiny slip of a girl who didn't look old enough to be in the competition, and sis a jacket Ralts. And no, she did not appreciate the comparison to purse dogs. Unethical? Sure. Did it actually provide even a slight advantage? Not a single fucking bit. Honestly, we hadn't really expected it to. The truly good competitors were either already confident and more or less done with their training, or smart enough to train in secret.

The actual day of the opening ceremony was exciting. So many people, so much energy in the air. Our whole family had gotten front row seats to watch and not for the first time we contemplated the fact that we were all very much celebrities and VIPs in some manner and to some degree. Still so fucking weird. Hell, even Marina's mom qualified as a VIP, though she was incognito at the moment. At least our political, celebrity, and financial pull had made getting tickets for everyone to all of the events and getting access for Marina to sit in on our matches as our couch possible.

When one of the choreographers gave us the signal to go out with the fire I would use to light the central torch we did it with style instead of just, you know, running through the field and up all of those steps. Partly because we were pretty sure that if we tried I'd collapse before I was halfway to said steps, but also because we just did not do running or simple. Instead we did showy psychic, messing up our control on purpose so power bled out into the visible spectrum with a purplish glow. From sis. After all, why show our hand as both of us being psychics if we didn't have to.

Still, we cut a pretty impressive figure in our trainer outfit and the now iconic stylized flame logo of Red Technologies displayed everywhere we could fit it without getting gaudy. We'd even made a hair pin in the shape of it to hold up my hair in an elaborate tail. The announcers were pretty surprised at the blatant advertising, but they were quick on their feet and they certainly agreed with us on how well we pulled off the whole thing.

Then we encountered something that annoyed us. A lot. We were pretty sure we'd told Gengar Vittore to tell all Rocket operatives to leave my fucking Conference the fuck alone. So when we found ourselves face to face with the idiot trio trying to ruin our moment of awesomeness, we may have been a tad rougher than we should have. Credit to the idiots where it's due, they were fucking terrified when they saw who exactly was carrying the fire, they still remembered Cinnabar, but Jessie tried to take the fire anyway. We objected. Strenuously. With a lot of violence. We're pretty sure we broke more than a few bones. When Meowth tried intervening with their fucking stupid giant robot thing, sis smashed a Psychic into its stupid face and crumpled it like a fucking soda can. Fucking idiot trio.

Ugh. Now we'd have to arrange for someone to break them out of jail after the Conference was over. Right. Porygon, send a message to G-Vittore to extract the idiots and keep them the fuck away.

We walked up to the central torch and the Moltres fire came alive, flowing of its own accord into the bowl, though we did make sure it made a nice Red Tech logo as it flowed in. Amazingly, we actually felt some feelings of annoyance coming from the fire. We'd have to learn that trick. The show that followed was pretty amazing, with fireworks that somehow worked in daylight and all manner of spectacles drawing the eye everywhere. Everyone started clearing out an hour later, and we headed for the administrative area to get our first fight assigned to us. Wonder who we'd fight, on what field we'd fight.

We walked up to one of the clerks at the terminals, and handed her our Avatar to check us in. The randomizer cycled through the four field types until it settled on a snowflake. The ice field. Yue would get a chance to have some fun.

"Excellent, though you'll have to wait until an opponent is selected for you. I'm afraid you got here a bit early, Miss Sato." She fiddled around with her console and our picture appeared on the screen beside her. "This year we've implemented a new notification system for people who have an Avatar phone, so when your opponent is selected you'll receive a text message with their name and the time of your match."

Ah, magnificent. We were dragging the fucking pokeworld into the future and we couldn't be happier about. Having the Conference include things specifically for our phones made us think there may be some credence to the whispers we'd been hearing about an exclusive League contract to use our tech.

"Thank you. We'll be on our way then." We sent a message to Marina asking her if she wanted to join us at a cafe we'd seen near the ice field while we waited for our match to be scheduled.

We'd been at the cafe for an hour with Marina, who kept trying to wheedle details on what we planned to do for our match when we finally received our match notification. We would fight some rando called Ron Valentine in half an hour. Gary showed up a few minutes after that, likely to wait for his match to start. He was surprisingly civil and didn't try to tease us about Marina, instead he was fully focused on planning for his own match. He wanted to open up with his Alakazam due to its general versatility and power, as well as the rarity of Ghost and Dark types. Good boy, he was taking things seriously. We left just as we felt Ash and company coming up to the cafe as well. Fucking coincidences.

A short walk later saw us on a raised platform on the red side of the arena, across from some dude in his early twenties. Ron Valentine was not as disappointing as we'd expected. he had a measure of destiny in him that the majority of people just didn't have. He was blond and dressed casually in jeans and a t-shirt, and seemed like he might have made it out of the preliminaries if he'd fought almost anyone else. Then he saw us, his opponents, and smirked. Yeah, okay. We had a feeling we were going to have to make an example out of him.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the first battle of this year's Indigo Plateau Conference!" The crowd went wild. "The battle will take place on the ice field! On the green side, we have a Conference favorite and one of last year's semi finalists, Ron Valentine! And on the red side we have a newcomer and the trainer who carried the Moltres fire to the central torch, ten year old Azula Sato from Pallet Town, who has a tough battle ahead of her. What a way to start your Conference circuit career! Each trainer will fight with three pokemon, let the battle begin!"

"Sorry little girl, but it's nothing personal." He kept smirking at us even as he threw out a pokeball. "At least you'll get to see a powerful pokemon before you have to go back home!"

Then a fucking Rhydon of all fucking things came out of his pokeball. Fucking seriously? That was what this condescending idiot called a powerful pokemon? Yeah, no. Sorry Yue, but this was now example time. Now we just had to figure out the best way to do it. Show of power with one of our monsters, or show of power with someone who looked milder, like sis. The latter would be much more humiliating, and would destroy his credibility, if perhaps only briefly until we kept stomping everyone put in front of us. The former would have us raise in threat level to the rest of the competition and lower our ability to shock and awe right now, as opposed to it happening down the line.

Well, sorry about your ego Ron Valentine, but we liked drama and theatrics a little too much. Sis Teleported out onto the field and stood there like she faced six feet tall rock monsters every day. Which she didn't, but we were pretty sure the monsters she did face and beat every day were orders of magnitude above a fucking Rhydon.

"Ron has opened with his Rhydon, a strong battler that endured some tough battles last year, and what is this?! Azula has sent out her starter, a Ralts named Luna! Our newcomer may not be taking things as seriously as she should!" Then we took another step in building our legend. And temporarily destroying Valentine's reputation and ego. We keyed our microphones and said that phrase we'd stolen from somewhere so long ago.

"After you, trainer."

"Arceus above, viewers, Azula has given Ron the first move! What is she thinking?!"

"I'm sorry Little Red, but you're really asking for it. Stone Edge!"

The Rhydon stomped the ground, causing a spike of rock to break through the frozen earth, then sent it flying at sis with a punch in a move that vaguely reminded us of earthbenders from the cartoon that seemed to have bled names and bullshit all over our life. Weird. We really needed to get on with the whole finding out what legendary led to our life being the way it is. We'd promised an ass kicking for throwing bullshit at us. We absentmindedly raised a Protect and started gathering power for a Psychic.

"I can't believe my eyes! The tiny Ralts blocked a full power Stone Edge at the last second!"

"Keep using Stone Edge, she can't stop them all!"

Hm. This time the Rhydon sent out two jagged stones at us at the same time, and we sent a pair of Psychics at them, exploding the rocks mid air into a fine dust. We supposed that if we were weaker trainers or pokemon, those attacks might have been too strong and too fast to stop. It really was a shame he'd gotten matched against us this early. If he hadn't he'd have probably gotten somewhere, and when if he'd eventually gotten a chance to fight us, he'd known we weren't to be trifled with. In such a hypothetical situation we likely would not have felt the need to crush him. Ah well, such is life.

"Psychic."

The spear of psychic energy was overkill. It really was. It was the kind of attack we'd have used against something like a Dragonite, or a Metagross, hell it wouldn't have been out of place in a fight against a legendary. Against a Rhydon? Tyrannosaurus Reckt was one of the few ways to describe the results. The Psychc hit with more power than we'd used against our Snorlaxes, though not quite what we'd used to break Suicune. We didn't want to kill the Rhydon, after all. The shockwave knocked down Valentine, or it could have been his Rhydon slamming against the base of his platform and cracking it nearly all the way up to the floor. We had a hard time keeping our grins from showing. We'd actually stunned a fucking packed stadium into silence for a few seconds before they broke out into deafening cheers and shouts.

"Victory for Azula! Please send out your next pokemon!"

"Incredible, people, absolutely incredible! Tiny Luna the Ralts took out Ron's Rhydon in a single overwhelming attack!"

"I overestimated you, little girl, but this ends now. Go Gengar!" And this time we couldn't stop ourselves. We actually laughed out loud. We were the worst opponent this guy could have pulled out a Gengar against in the whole Conference. "Shut up brat! Shadow Ball!"

We seized the ball of negative energy with our power and squeezed it out of existence, much like Gardemom had done to our Psychics for so long now. Then the Gengar vanished to wherever the fuck. We probably didn't even need combat precognition for this one. Chances were high it'd pop up at our backs with a Shadow Ball or perhaps even a priority attack like Shadow Sneak or something like that.

"Sludge Bomb!"

Gengar appeared behind us with its mouth already open and the Sludge Bomb halfway out of it. The ball of poisonous sludge flew the short distance towards our back and exploded against a wall of psychic power, splattering everywhere but us. Then a Psychic flew back at the Gengar before it could vanish away and splattered it's semi gaseous form all over the base of our platform. Poor bastard was going to need a steel type at least a little resistant to fire if he wanted us to make even a little effort.

"I can't believe it! Newcomer Azula looks to be on track to smash her way through what looked to be like an impossible match for her! What will Ron do?"

"Damn you for making us bring out our ace so early. Go Ampharos!"

Now we paid attention and pushed our combat precognition. Electric attacks could be fucking dangerous.

"Thunderbolt!"

Predict, Protect, Psychic back. Then the Ampharos actually dodged. Oh baby. Were we going to have an all out slugfest this early?! Fucking yes! Fucking forget keeping a low profile. Slugfests were rare things not to be wasted. Thunderbolts and Psychics traveled back and forth between us and the Ampharos. We lived for this kind of fighting. We stepped up the force and speed behind our attacks little by little, and the dodges got closer and closer. We kept it at that level of intensity for a bit, you know, give the crowd a show the likes of which they were unlikely to see very often. Honestly, it was like playing catch, but for keeps.

Then we very clearly and deliberately smashed a Psychic into Ampharos' dodge. The mutant Electric sheep slammed into the wall of the arena and fell down, out cold.

"Simply amazing! That has to be one for the history books, folks. Trainer Azula, what do you feed that Ralts?! Pokemon Trainer Red, Azula Sato, has pulled of the most unbelievable win I've ever seen in the preliminaries!"

Sis Teleported back to the platform and jumped into her spot in our jacket. We turned and pulled Marina with us when we noticed she was a bit stunned at seeing a slugfest like that one. We sensed a news crew following us into the green room in the ice field arena, and for a moment we considered Teleporting out. Then we got an idea and posed so that the first thing the camera would catch would be a bunch of Red Tech logos. We would force our fucking phones down everyone's throats if we had to.

"Miss Sato! Tara Jayne, PXTV News, could we ask you some questions?"

We nodded and beckoned them over to us.

"Azula, can I call you Azula?" We nodded. "It's not every day that we see someone so young have such a dominating victory over an experienced veteran trainer like Ron Valentine. How did your Ralts, I believe her name is Luna, become so powerful so quickly?"

"Quickly?" Damn. The flinch at hearing our voice was big. Bet they weren't expecting that. "Sis is older than me."

"Truly? And she's still a Ralts?"

"Ra-Ralts."

"You don't feel like evolving and you want a real challenge if you're going to go through the bother." We would never get tired of giving out that answer. Fucking caught everyone by surprise. "That… that has to be the first time we hear that one."

"We figured."

"If you don't mind me asking, Azula, would I be correct in assuming that, uh, that the reason your voice is like it is has something to do with the the scar on your neck?"

"There was an accident, completely unrelated to pokemon or training. That's all we're willing to speak on the matter." Yeah, we were never saying how it'd actually happened, to anyone, but especially not to a reporter and her cameraman. That seemed like a terrible idea for everyone involved.

"I see, I'm sorry to hear that. Any comments on your stunning victory?"

"To be honest, we were not expecting much to begin with, especially not after our match with Leader Blaine, but if Ron Valentine was the level of skill and power we can expect from the rest of our opponents… Well, we came to this Conference... with the expectations that we would... win it as handily as our mother... did her own, but we hadn't... expected it to be that easy. We... would like to ask Champion Lance to please ready his… team, because we have every intention of taking the... title from him."

And my fucking lungs picked the worst moment to act up. We fished out the inhaler and took a hit. The medicine started working pretty quickly, and we were back to normal within a minute. Our new reporter friend looked rather worried about us.

"Wow, um, are you okay?"

"Yes, it… happens every now and then. An unfortunate result from the accident we mentioned."

"I'm sorry to hear that. Well, those were some strong words you said. I hope you can back them up. I'm sure you won't mind if I dig into your trainer record to see what was so special about your match with Leader Blaine, or to find out who your parents are. Unless you'd like to comment on them yourself?"

"We're going to let you find that out on your own." We had a feeling the news would be more interesting that way. "But we suppose a few tidbits won't be too much. They're both former Champions and very famous."

"Truly? Well, I'm sure the network will do its research. Now, everyone's noticed you wear the Red Technologies logo on you, and that you used the trainer name "Red", could you comment on this?"

"It's our company. Our mothers and father helped set it up so we could market the Avatar phone. We like to think we're doing pretty well on that front."

"Yours?! How did you…?"

"Pardon, but we wouldn't be true to ourselves if we didn't answer as we are about to: Fuck you, that's how." That shocked her out of her, well, shock at a ten year old somehow doing the impossible. They'd have to start getting used to that from us.

"You keep using "we", could you tell me about that?

"We have been together since we were born, sis and I, our bond is correspondingly deep."

"I… wow. I don't know how to respond to that."

"Understandable." Our phone's text message ringtone went off. A glance showed us our next match had already been scheduled to start in two hours at the water field. "We must go now, our next match is in two hours and we would like to get something to eat."

"Thank you for your time, Azula. Good luck on your next match."

We Teleported out to the cafe from earlier, and settled down to have a meal with Marina. Did this count as a date? We were going to count it as a date. Marina was very pretty when she blushed, and she seemed to blush a lot when we kissed her. Yeah, definitely a date.


	64. Conquest M

Conquest 3.m

Watching Azula tear her way through the Indigo Conference was like watching a force of nature. She was unstoppable, untouchable, uncaring, but most of all, bored. I knew she'd expected as much, that she considered herself to be far above all others, even her nephew and Ash, who she considered better than most, and yet she was still disappointed. She'd hoped to find a worthy opponent. She spoke about it sometimes, when her, their, mood turned dark. She lived for power, to truly use that power, and to have no one who could drive her to make an effort? It weighed on her.

I'd watched her on her first match at the Conference. Her face in that blank, emotionless mask she wore nearly all the time. She showed emotion so rarely, though I knew it was mostly just a mask. The more time I spent around her the more and more her and Luna's emotions seemed to just hang around them in a cloud that was easy to sense and feel. It was worrying, how she seemed to be anxious, scared, and slightly depressed so often. How little she seemed to sleep, and how what little she did sleep was plagued with nightmares that leaked some fairly horrible emotions. I was worried about her, and from some of the questions her mothers had asked me, so were they.

I wasn't blind. I could see she cared, more than cared, about me. Even before that first kiss, I'd had an idea about her feelings, and the stirrings of feelings of my own for her forced me to consider things about myself I'd never considered before. She was almost obsessed, but her affection was honest. She cared about my well being, she cared about Mom's well being. I felt the Gengars she left at Mom's home, watching, making sure that we were safe against retribution from a family I'd never known I had until I ran into my aunt.

And wasn't that another worrisome thing? What could have been so terrible for things to be as they were? I remembered the nightmares she'd had after finding out my family's secrets, remembered how disturbed and broken she'd been when she came back from talking to Clair. I'd done my best to comfort her, and it'd seemed to work, but she'd had to leave so soon. The next time I saw her, the bags under her eyes were even worse than before. At least Mom seemed happier than I'd ever seen her since she got in touch with Aunt Clair. At least something good had come from that. Well, besides qualifying for the Silver Conference, but that seemed so small in comparison.

Azula and Luna. When I first met them so many months ago at Professor Elm's lab and challenged them to a battle, they'd refused to let Wani-Wani fight Luna. I hadn't thought much of it at the time, she'd sent out Zeus and we'd tied, but now, seeing them demolish a trainer so much older than them, supposedly so much experienced than them… Well, it was really quite a sight to behold, especially when I could tell they weren't trying, not even when they and the Ampharos put up that light show.

That was another peculiarity about Azula. When you spoke with her you weren't speaking just with her. When she spoke, it wasn't just her speaking. Azula and Luna were so close at times they were more a single individual than two. They were unimaginably close, sometimes disturbingly so, but I couldn't bring myself to care. They were unique, passionate, strong, and frankly super cute. So I was going to see where things went. It helped a lot that kissing was, uh, amazing, even if she had a tendency for public displays of affection. I was still blushing from the kissing she initiated at the cafe she seemed to favor while waiting for her matches.

She smashed her second match, sent out her Starmie, gave her opponent the first move with that little phrase she'd used when we fought. She proceeded o one shot her opponent's Seaking and Victreebel with a Psychic, then drowned their Tentacruel in an unending tide of Thunderbolts and Psychics. She'd done it with her face in that emotionless mask she always wore and an added air of bored disappointment to her. She actually pulled out her phone and put on her headphones on after the Victreebel was recalled. She was already walking back to the arena's exit, beckoning us to follow, when the Tentacruel went down. Nameless the Starmie circled back to her and hovered around her head for a few second before being recalled.

We had dinner with our families, taking over a couple tables at an all-you-can-eat buffet. It was amusing to watch Azula's niece and her Chansey browbeat her into eating much more than she usually did. Interesting to watch her mothers scold her and Luna for being as disrespectful as they had been in their second match, and them being stubborn and pouting about how there was really nothing else they could have done. At one point Ash and Gary loudly proclaimed they would be the ones to win the Conference and Azula and Luna snorted at the declaration. It felt like what I'd always thought a family reunion might be like. Even Mom, for all that she'd barely met everyone, seemed to be fitting in well with Azula's mothers. I was happy.

The accommodations assigned to our weird group were nice. A furnished cabin with room for everyone, even if Azula and Luna hadn't crawled into my bed half an hour after most of us had gone to bed. She'd done that at home too. I couldn't say I minded. For all that she seemed to be bones and cold skin, she and Luna were surprisingly huggable, and they loved cuddling into me.

That's how I woke up. Cuddling. My hands had not wandered during the night. At all. Nor had the terrible twosome sighed in disappointment when I repositioned said hands. A night without nightmares for her and Luna, and a pleasant one for me. Wonder who she'd fight today, and how. Hopefully she'd have a chance to cut loose. Brooding wasn't good for her. I shook them awake. We could get an early start and get a nice breakfast together before her first match.

Their next match was as easy as the first two, with Nameless making another appearance and letting their opponent wail at the starfish until it looked like it was dead. The announcers were baffled at her complete lack of response to attacks, Nameless was completely covered in blood, then there was a shift in Azula. She never stopped being bored, but she seemed to have deemed her demonstration of superiority to be enough, and then a Recover had her starfish looking like new a moment later. Then she crushed the Pidgeot that had been beating on it in one hit, followed by a Gloom. The third was a Raichu that actually managed to fight back and force another Recover before taking a barrage of Psychics to the face, slumping down against the arena wall where it'd slammed after the first hit.

She was less disrespectful this time, sure, she'd still been… less than ideal with the show she'd put on, but at least this time she hadn't essentially ignored the fight in favor of her phone. Or left the way she had last time. I had this feeling that the general public would have two views of her: arrogant disrespectful child among the older people, and cool badass among the younger ones.

Funniest part was that for all her lack of manners, and for all that she couldn't be bothered to even pretend to be a little modest, no one could say it'd been luck. Not after the smackdown Luna had laid on their first opponent, or the one Nameless had delivered to the second one, and most definitely not after the show they'd just put up. Seriously, it'd lasted longer than the previous two combined, and had consisted mostly of the starfish letting its opponents hit it until they felt like they'd made their point.

I watched Azula feed Luna a waffle fry, love for her sister clear on her face, giggling when she pulled the fry away and Luna pulled most of it back to her mouth with her powers. Then Azula poked Luna's front horn. The most powerful Ralts to ever live responded with an annoyed cry of "Ralts!" and jumped on her sister, poking her back, prompting a breathy squeak from Azula. Well, what do you know? She was ticklish. The ensuing poking war lasted a few minutes and ended as a decisive victory for Luna who was merciless, slippery, tiny, and didn't have severe breathing problems to rob her of her endurance in the face of uncontrollable giggling.

I laughed at their antics. Stopping for a snack had definitely been a great idea. I wished I'd recorded that. Then I realized that maybe I may have not had a chance to record it, but quite a few of the people sitting around us had. If the whispers along the lines of "Oh Arceus, they're so cute!" and "Wow, that's Trainer Azula!" were anything to go by, they'd just won themselves a major PR win.

Seemed like they were in a good mood. I smiled and snatched Luna from her sister's lap in the middle of her show of dominance over said little sister, then tickled her until she surrendered. Damnit, how could they be so cute? Azula was beaming at me and Luna was pouting with her arms crossed, pointedly looking away from us. I kissed the top of her back horn. I was doomed. I don't think I could ever walk away from so much cute.


End file.
